boardwalk on South coast to be extended

The Ministry of Maritime Affairs and The Blue Economy is looking to extend the boardwalk on the South Coast to reach St. Lawrence Gap.

Speaking with the media on Friday on the Folkstone Boardwalk, Minister Kirk Humphrey revealed that this is one of the promises in the governing Barbados Labour Party’s manifesto from the 2018 General Elections that they intended to deliver on.

However, Ricardo Arthur, Project Manager of the Coastal Assessment and Management Programme, revealed that they would not be able to start working on the Richard Haynes Boardwalk for another two to three years.

“We are looking to extend the Richard Haynes Boardwalk to St. Lawrence Gap, but it won’t be a continuous boardwalk,” he said.

He revealed that based on the type of work that goes into creating a boardwalk, it is important for them to seek stakeholder input and talk with owners of the properties in that area.

“What we found was that there is a section by Rendezvous that is primarily residential. So when you have the boardwalk, the commercial businesses welcome it but these smaller parts of the land, people don’t really want the boardwalk and we’re trying to work with them,” he said.

“So it may be a situation where we have a discontinuous boardwalk and have access around the headlands, but not a continuous boardwalk around the current stretch, but the idea is to connect the edge of the current boardwalk by Accra Beach Hotel to St. Lawrence Gap and enhance it.”

Arthur noted that the designs were complete, but also revealed that the cost to do this project was roughly BDS$30 million. Citing funding as a hindrance to plans, he however noted that since they had a longstanding relationship with the Inter-American Development Bank, that would be their most likely source of funding.