But for two decades all levels of government have been dicking around with the site, doing everything but building some damn housing already. Governments chased one impossible fantasy after another for the site. It was the vehicle for an aborted but self-enriching scheme by business fraudsters to host the Commonwealth Games. Then Mayor Mike Savage managed to get the municipality to spend a gazillion dollars to study putting a stadium that no one wants on the site, before pivoting to a masturbatory exercise in using it for an Amazon World Headquarters, as if Jeff Bezos would give two shits about Halifax. The federal crown corporation Canada Lands has been studying the area to death, finally getting around to saying that it will be fully developed by… 2034.

Last year, Canada Lands committed to making 20% of the housing to be built on the site “affordable,” but it was anyone’s guess what affordable actually means. “The company plans to start building roads and selling lots in 2024, acting senior director Mary Jarvis told the Harbour East Marine Drive Community Council Thursday night,” reported Zane Woodford in February 2023.

For some reason, the 20% affordability promise, still undefined, was re-announced yesterday, but Heather Chisholm, Canada Lands’ director of real estate said Canada Lands “is now working with the municipality to get the required approval to subdivide the property, and will then sell off parcels of land to developers. She expects construction to start in the fall of 2025,” reports Nicola Seguin for the CBC.

Absolutely no explanation was given for why the start of construction was delayed from 2024 to 2025, and I seriously doubt we’ll even see that.

Moreover, Canada Lands is evidently more concerned about maximizing profit over meeting the need for public housing. The whole site could be government-owned and -managed public housing, but instead Canada Lands is parceling it off to private developers. The 20% “affordable” criteria, whatever that means, will be met by “working with” overly stretched and under-resourced non-profits that, frankly, aren’t up to the task.

In the 1960s, Mulgrave Park went from an idea to planning to construction in under 18 months, but now Shannon Park is now looking at three decades of inaction, and the action that is promised to come is inadequate and set for failure.

This is housing the government could build immediately, without hassle or fanfare. Just building some damn housing already.