HALIFAX—Provincial funding to demolish the CBC building at the corner of Bell Rd. and Summer St. was announced Thursday as the latest step in the Halifax Infirmary site expansion.

The Department of Health and Wellness announced that $1.6 million will go toward the demolition of the well-known building.

The land is needed to move forward with the expansion of the Halifax Infirmary site.

That expansion will include a new cancer centre, expanded inpatient care centre (hospital beds and operating rooms), a new outpatient centre and a research and innovation centre.

The province said a request for project proposals for the demolition work will be issued this fall.

DHX and QEII New Generation project team will continue to use the CBC building until the end of 2019.

The demolition is slated to start in February 2020.

The expansion of the Halifax Infirmary site is part of the larger multi-year QEII New Generation project, a redevelopment of the QEII Health Sciences Centre.

The project includes the Community Outpatient Centre in Bayers Lake, expansion and renovations of Dartmouth General Hospital, and new and renovated operating rooms at Hants Community Hospital in Windsor.

This work will allow services to be moved out of the aging Centennial and Victoria and Dickson buildings on the Victoria General (VG) site in preparation for their eventual closure.

Premier Stephen McNeil said the demolition is in keeping with the overall timeline of the QEII redevelopment.

With renovations to the existing Halifax Infirmary nearing completion, he said “now we’re looking at the external footprint for the P3 project.”

He said the $1.6 million needed for the demolition comes from within the original $2 billion investment for the redevelopment.

“We’re looking forward to continuing to modernize our health care system,” the premier said Thursday when responding to reporters’ questions about the announcement.

“For all of the talk that we’ve had in and around health care, we are actually a generation, quite frankly, that get’s an opportunity to actually reshape the delivery model.”

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Updates on the QEII New Generation Project are available online.

With files from Taryn Grant

Yvette d’Entremont is a Halifax-based reporter focusing on health. Follow her on Twitter: @ydentremont

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