And the dice keep rolling…

The recently announced move of Casino Nova Scotia from downtown Halifax to suburban Dartmouth has a lot of unknown variables. Only one thing is for sure—the days of “business as usual” in the gambling industry are numbered.

It was a piece of land only a mother could love: an active quarry with a swampy, wooded topography.

“It was used,” developer Glenn Munro told the Chronicle-Herald in 2007. “It was abused. It was categorized as brownfield. It was not hugely polluted, but there were issues. There was a dump, an asphalt plant, some oil spills.”

But the 511 acres in Dartmouth was at the convergence of three highways and could be reached by 75 per cent of Halifax Regional Municipality residents in 15 minutes or less. And most importantly, it was for sale. Other developers looked at the wasteland and saw a problem child. Munro, the Eastern Canada managing partner at North American Development Group had other thoughts—what about a shopping centre?

Two decades later, Dartmouth Crossing is an established part of Atlantic Canada’s business landscape, a bustling commercial district home to big box stores and a village-style retail hub. Munro’s vision inspired countless businesses to have similar revelations and build on the once-maligned terrain. Hell even froze over for IKEA. It built a 328,000-square foot showroom after famously leaving Nova Scotia because Sunday shopping hadn’t yet been legalized.

Great Canadian Entertainment (GCE), the company which manages Casino Nova Scotia, is the latest to have an epiphany at Dartmouth Crossing. As announced in January, its executives took in a piece of land behind the Swedish furniture giant, on a lonely perch above Highway 118, and thought: what about a new gambling palace?

 

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