Capital projects to take forefront

Now is the time for Government to invest in its own. This from Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley as she spoke after a tour of the Hyatt Ziva project at the start of this weekend. During a media briefing hosted to update the nation on the progress of the project which lay in limbo for some time, the Prime Minister said under the current COVID-19 climate was the right time to move ahead on local initiatives.

Stating that the effects of the viral infection were being felt by all nations across the world, Mottley said that the extent to which Barbados depended on tourism alone needed to change. “It won't be tourism alone. There are some people who probably are ready and there are one or two, quite frankly, who probably want to pause largely because they want to see what happens in the next few months or they are dependent on the banks or other financial institutions that have said to them ‘Let’s just wait it out and see what happens in the next few weeks’. So when we have projects that are ready to go, believe you, me that we have to go,” she said, referring to the Hyatt project which was ready to roll due to the developers’ commitment.

With society rendered less mobile than they would be normally due to the pandemic, Prime Minister Mottley said that the time was ripe to do some housekeeping. “When I say that the government has to assume a bigger role in the development of capital projects, it is because we recognise that now is the time to redo a lot of the roads that were not done for a decade, now is the time to put in the water mains that need replacing because they were put down over 120 years ago. Now is the time for us fix some of the buildings – Dale (Marshall) has some stuff up by him in St. Joseph, we have some schools that we all know are in bad need of repair and now is the time for us to do it while children are not at school. And now is the time for us to take a few derelict buildings that Government has. Government has a rental bill of over $75 million a year – that's what we inherited and we are trying to see how we can reduce that rental bill by being able to do some things.” she said.

Hyatt Ziva developer Mark Maloney was also in attendance and had acquired the lease for the old Empire theatre which lay a stone's throw away. He noted that five years after acquiring the lease, plans were in place for a new theatre for the arts. “We were refused permission for what we wanted to do at the Empire theatre which was originally to incorporate a craft brewery and some other things, and we changed up the design to turn it into a fully-operational theatre. We are a big part of Operation Triple Threat and we believe in what it is doing for the youth of Barbados. Some amazing things so we would like to have it as a full operating theatre.” he said.

Stating that the new design was submitted and going through proper procedures, Maloney said that he hoped to incorporate construction along with Hyatt project. Calling the Empire project 'near and dear' to his heart, Maloney explained that although it would be costing in the region of $15 million to complete, it was not a money-making venture. “The building is going to be restored in the exact condition that it was before rather than do extensions and so on. It is in progress and like anything else we encountered some problems with the original concept and had to revert to restoring the building and then looking at how we would utilise the building to get the maximum seating because the space is quite limited there. We achieved just over 600 seats in the new design so we will progress that in time.” he said. (MP)