Metro Centre gets new name and new sign
Posted Sep 16, 2014 03:18:53 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The former Metro Centre got a facelift Tuesday.
Crews were hard at work putting the new ‘Scotibank Centre’ sign on the building ahead of an official unveiling scheduled for Friday.
The name change will be tough for Haligonians to remember when referring to the building, and one local journalist is refusing to call it by its new corporate name.
Tim Bousquet is the owner and editor of the Halifax Examiner. He says we shouldn’t be naming public buildings after private corporations, especially not bank that “nickle and dime us to death.”
Bousquet says if Scotiabank wants him to call the building the Scotiabank Centre, they’ll have to pay him.
“”The city is obligated to call it that, but I’m not,” he said. “If they want me to call it the name of a bank they can pay me — two hundred bucks every time I do it.”
Bousquet is jokingly referring to the building as the “$45 NSF Fee Arena” because of Scotiabank’s high fees.
But in all seriousness, Bousquet worries about the trend of giving corporations naming rights for their money. He points to the four-pad arena in Bedford, known as the BMO Centre, as an example. The Bank of Montreal paid $100 thousand for naming rights on the $50 million building.
“We lose something when public buildings get plastered with the names of private coporations,” he said.
Bousquet says the government has enough taxpayer money to pay for buildings like these, so there’s no need to go “begging hat-in-hand to corporations and then slam their names on our buildings.”
News 95.7 spoke to a few people walking by the building on Tuesday. Most aren’t too worried about the new name, but some said they might have trouble remembering to call it that.
“It’s been the Metro Centre my whole life so I’m not sure I can re-program it at this point,” said Tanya Moxley.
“Like everything else, everything changes,” said Jim Smith. “Not much you can do about it. If they’re gonna do it, they’re gonna do it.”
No matter what you call it, the building will gets its unveiling ceremony Friday at 11 a.m.
