Going to a game or a show at the largest arena in Atlantic Canada will soon mean passing through a metal detector.
Halifax Regional Municipality posted a tender this week for “new security gates” at the building formerly known as the Metro Centre. The Halifax Examiner does not refer to the building by its newer name, that of a bank.
The tender, posted Tuesday and closing Dec. 22, seeks a contractor to supply and install six metal detectors. The “standard of acceptance” for those metal detectors is the Garrett P6500I. The company says the walk-through detectors meet “the world’s highest test certifications.”
Erin Esiyok-Prime, a spokesperson for Events East, the Crown corporation that runs the arena and the convention centre, said in an email that the metal detectors have been “identified as a priority” as the organization continues “to adapt to the evolving security environment in which we operate.”
The arena has “successfully trialed security gates at a few events over the past year or two but we require an additional 6 gates to fully implement them when the time is right,” Esiyok-Prime said.
It started those trials in 2018 with Halifax Mooseheads and Hurricanes games.
Esiyok-Prime said there was no specific incident that sparked the increased security. Rather, it’s “simply part of our longer term approach to security.”
“Security gates have become an industry standard over the past few years in venues across the country, and the world,” Esiyok-Prime said.
The municipality will pay for the gates through its 2020-2021 capital budget, and the price tag is expected to be $100,000.
The arena is forecasting a budget deficit of $2.65 million for fiscal 2020-2021.