News on Hall of Fame home coming soon: Rainnie

A new home for the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame will be unveiled by the end of the year, Hall of Fame CEO Bruce Rainnie said recently.

The Hall, which had been at the Scotiabank Centre for 15 years, closed its doors in September 2020 after being unable to come to terms on a new lease with its landlord. The lease had expired in

February 2020 but had continued on a month-to-month basis.

“It’s been a rollercoaster of 18 months as it pertains to a new home,” Rainnie said. “We have explored options in literally every corner of the province and I’m fairly confident in saying that we will be announcing a new home certainly before the end of 2021.

“I can say with great confidence it will be bigger and better and offer more variety than we ever had at any time in our history.”

Rainnie didn’t disclose where the new hall will be located but did acknowledge that it would be somewhere in Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM).

“The building will be right here in HRM,” he said. “After a lot of thought and a lot of consultation with some very smart people in our facility committee, we think Halifax is probably the best location for it, in terms of the capital city of the province and its greatest population.”

Rainnie added that beacon technology will allow visitors to virtually access the Hall of Fame from arenas across Nova Scotia.

“We’re making a lot of effort through technology to have presence in every corner of the province, certainly in every major arena in the province,” Rainnie said. “Little egg type things called beacons, where you have an app on your phone, you can go up to it and you’re a part of the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame right there.”