Upgraded Park and Beach Reclamation To Be Completed In June
Meanwhile, in a matter of two months, the BTL Park will be ready to accommodate residents with a much more aesthetically pleasing environment. Mayor Bradley says that the seawall and reclamation aspect will be completed in two weeks and the whole park should be ready in time for the summer holidays.
DARRELL BRADLEY
"The BTL project is an impressive project; for a long time people have been talking about having a beach and upgraded park in Belize City and we are very pleased that we were able through our efforts with restructuring our finance and improve collection from our tax sources to be able to fund this and the sea wall and reclamation is going to be finished in 2 weeks and when that work is finished, the contractor will raise the park six inches, the entire park, even the original park and the reclaimed sections and they will be putting down grass. We are going to build a very nice amphitheatre that will allow for large concerts. We are going to build extended foot path that will allow for exercise in various times through the day and for persons just to walk with their kids and family activities. We will build on each of the sides a food court and we can accommodate 18 businesses.
Bowen & Bowen has pledged already that they will contribute the kiosks and these will not be the kiosks like octanes in the park presently. We are going to build very nice attractive kiosks, permanent structure and of course preference is being given to the people who are in the park currently, As part of our open for business campaign, we want to use these spaces, if we could, generate more business activities so if persons would want to go into the park to apply their trades: sell food or sell other kinds of products or items, they will be able to do so and we will have activities for that. We are also going to build a 200ft pier into the sea and that will be a 200 ft by 30 ft pier and that will allow for interaction with the water. We have already talked to people from the environmental department to look at the quality of the water, of course because of the reclamation further out into the sea and the quality of the water there is better and with the pier going out a further 200 ft into the water, we are thinking that the quality will allow for interaction for people to be able to swim and engage so that it will be a true beach in Belize City. We had some consultants come and they had looked at the beautiful and the water and the first question they asked was, 'where is the beach?' and within a very short period of time we will be able to say that that will be the beach located within the precincts of Belize City and we expect that that project will be completed by the ending of June of this year, fully completed.
There will be no fee levied against persons to use it.
One of the things that we are going into is we are trying to see how we could work with the stake holders and have an impact on public spaces. One of the areas that we have identified as critical is providing people in particular families and children with safe areas where they could recreate for very inexpensive amounts and they could just enjoy themselves. We are going to have, there is a police booth that is originally located at BTL park, we are still going to maintain that. We are going to have our special constables who are going to regularly patrol at the park as they do with all of our places throughout Belize City. We are going to encourage people to be responsible when they use that park but there will no plans for us to charge any user fee. So, that people will be able to buy food and be able to recreate in the park; they will be able to enjoy concerts for the park; they will be able swim and enjoy the pier and we think that will be an 'A' class venue and a safe venue where people could just enjoy themselves for free."
Almost a million dollars is being invested in the BTL Park project.
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