Shannon Park
Shannon Park

Shannon Park

Shannon Park

Former National Defence site

Halifax (Nova Scotia), Canada

Built in 1949 on the shores of the Bedford Basin in Halifax, Shannon Park is a former site of the Department of National Defence (DND) that stretches on over 96.5 acres (38.8 hectares). While the site was gradually abandoned at the turn of 2000, it was in 2003 that the last employees left permanently.

Originally, the small community was consisting of 421 apartments (all identical) in approximately 65 buildings, a Canex store (military store), two schools, two churches, warehouses, arenas, swimming pool, center Community and sports fields. In short, a complete city within a city. The architecture is very banal and apartments showed the same restraint.

At the final closure of the site, a large revitalization project was begun. Very quickly, people were consulted and a schedule was developed that target the spring 2019. This is when the new condos should be available for sale.

Until then, they have to remove asbestos and raze the buildings. Already, the operation is going well. There is only few buildings where asbestos has not been removed. Overall, the last buildings should be razed in February 2017. For now, though nothing has been demolished, all the buildings who have been cleaned are completely emptied. Only the concrete structures remains, which mean that there are no more division or piping inside. Photographically speaking, it is a very boring place except from the outside.

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