Development Issues for New Providence

by Larry Smith

“We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it.” - Felix Adler

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” - Alfred North Whitehead

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A top dinner table topic these days is how our lives will change as New Providence grows into a single chaotic conurbation, from shore to teeming shore.

More and more of us with an option to leave are worried that we won’t be able to live here much longer the way things are going. It will surely take some hard decisions and tough management to maintain a reasonable quality of life on this 80-square-mile island.

Experts predict a huge jump in the island’s population to over 300,000 by the next decade. This will make Nassau as crowded as Malta is today - and that Mediterranean island is already the world’s fourth most densely packed nation.

So the big question on everyone’s mind is: how can we possibly cope – both financially and organisationally – when the authorities already find it hard to grasp the scale of problems we face now?

Based on census projections, our total population today is 325,000, with 225,660 (about 70%) living on New Providence, producing a density of 2,812 people per square mile.

New Providence is already overpopulated in some respects. We have to import fresh water, for example. And commuting to and from work and school kills hours in each day, cutting productivity in the workplace.

On top of that there are housing shortages, squatter settlements, few recreational options, rising crime and street harassment, derelict neighbourhoods, and growing problems with pollution and waste disposal.

Yet most of the billions of dollars set to flow into the country are earmarked for New Providence and vicinity. And this island will continue to be the country’s main engine of growth for the foreseeable future.

To deal with the pressures, we’re already spending $80 million on road improvements that began in 2001 and will drag on for at least another two years. It’s the biggest civil works project in our history. But even bigger ones are needed.

A decade ago, the Inter-American Development Bank financed studies for the relocation of Bay Street’s container port to the southwest tip of the island. The estimated cost back then was $200 million. More recent studies have looked at another site on the southwest coast, but a new costing depends on final specs.

Shippers have generally opposed the move for economic reasons: “We’ll be spending hundreds of millions to relocate an industry that returns only about $4 million a year, which will only increase the cost of living”, they argue. But planners say it is essential for the redevelopment of Nassau, all the way from Fort Charlotte to Fort Montagu. This is a holy grail that has been pursued for years, and may now be within our grasp.

A final version of the downtown redevelopment plan is now on the cabinet table. It was drafted by the EDAW group, an international planning firm hired by the government last year. Once adopted, a decision must be made on the new port - whether to go to bid, or hire more consultants to draw up more options on how to proceed.

“This is the lynchpin,” Malcolm Martini, the prime minister’s planning advisor said recently. “The port must be moved expeditiously or the downtown redevelopment can’t work. Moving the port is fundamental to getting the whole thing rolling. And this has to be achieved next year or a huge credibility gap will develop with all sorts of consequences. “

Martini, a top Canadian planner who has worked on projects in China, Africa and Eastern Europe, as well as enjoying a stint as a Toronto city councillor, is optimistic that the government and the private sector will finally grasp the nettle and make the right choices. In his view we are unlikely to experience the worst case scenario:

“The problems of growth that this island faces are finite and can be fixed, but that will require some sacrifices in terms of more taxes and restrictions on our way of life. We have to think of New Providence as an urban centre – like New York.

“Three, or even four hundred thousand people on this island is not a terrible problem once things are managed properly,” he said. “Yes, that means some big investments have to be made, but what is the alternative?”

And he should know. Ten years ago, as a manager for the Canadian planning firm, Acres International, Martini wrote a report for the government on infrastructural choices and costs for New Providence. But a plan for the island was never implemented, so most of those choices and costs remain today – only amplified by the passage of time.

In fact, we’ve been talking about these issues since at least the 1980s, when the pressures were far less threatening. And, as G. K. Chesterton once said, “If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.” Today, there is a growing consensus in both the private and public sectors that hard decisions have to be made.

“This government is very much planning oriented,” Martini says. “We are trying to get a handle on all of the country’s long-term needs – education, health, housing, infrastructure and so on.”

And the needs have certainly grown as fast as the island has shrunk. Other than the airport and Lake Killarney, there are few large open spaces left, as a glance at a satellite image on Google Earth will quickly show.

In addition to the 208-acre Clifton Heritage Park, and the 200-acre site soon to be occupied by the new cargo port, the 5,000-acre South Ocean property and 3,800 acres owned by New Providence Development Co are being developed. Cable Beach will soon be rebuilt to include another 400 acres of government land for a new golf course. And new subdivisions are appearing all along the southeastern coast.

That leaves a few square miles of pine forest south of the airport – but probably not for long. The Water & Sewerage Corp is moving towards supplying the 10 million plus gallons of fresh water we use daily with a string of reverse osmosis plants around the island. So less water will need to be pumped out of the well fields or imported from Andros.

Opening the forested well fields to development will forever alter the remaining natural character of the island, and could well affect rainfall patterns: “This will soon become a big issue and should be publicly debated,” Mr Martini said. “It’s something we have to come to grips with fairly quickly. Do we preserve the pine forest or open it to new housing and commercial development?”

The question of expanding services and infrastructure to meet rising demand while maintaining a reasonable quality of life is one of the key issues of our time. And to prevent a social explosion - the government also has to secure public access to the coast compatible with the billions of dollars in upscale resort and residential development that it is approving.

Prime Minister Perry Christie told the PLP convention recently that “We need to understand the enormity of what is happening so we can prepare ourselves to take maximum advantage of the opportunities that are being created.”

And as financial columnist Larry Gibson argued: “The prospect of such significant growth has enormous implications for the country in many very fundamental ways. We need to embark on a massive job and skills training programme, (and get) our worsening crime situation under control.

“Will new taxes be necessary? Are we going to borrow massive amounts of money? Are we going to sell off national assets? We need policymakers to tell us where their thinking is in this regard. We will most likely have to implement a combination of all of the above. If there was ever a pressing time to engage in bipartisan national planning, it must be now.”

Meanwhile, conservationists at the Bahamas National Trust and the Clifton Heritage Foundation are wrestling with unfamiliar issues of public access to parks and wilderness areas that hardly crossed their minds before: “We have to think about things like staging areas, visitor centres, parking, fencing, boardwalks, waste disposal and security, all of which require more money”, BNT Parks Director Eric Carey said.

But the biggest deal in the works is a $300 million reconstruction of the waterfront and downtown area to “recapture its vitality and romance as an attractive retail district, cruise ship port, government complex and liveable 24-hour urban tropical neighbourhood,” according to a brochure produced by EDAW. It is supposed to begin soon, with a new parliament complex on the site of the old Royal Victoria Hotel.

“There is an extreme cost associated with no action,” EDAW says. The cycle of decreasing tourism, declining spending and tax revenue, increasing physical deterioration, and rising social, economic and environmental costs weigh strongly in favour of acting sooner rather than later.”

The city of Nassau as we know it today was built during the Depression, largely with revenues earned from bootlegging. And the town’s decrepit infrastructure is long overdue for replacement and rationalisation. But experts say little can be done until the container port goes.

A new terminal is to be built on 200 acres of government land directly behind the BEC power plant and Commonwealth Brewery. A 300-foot-wide channel will be carved out between them leading to inland docking facilities dredged to a depth of 20 or 30 feet. An EIA has already been completed and experts say sacrificing the coppice mediates environmental damage to the nearshore reefs.

With a looming general election concentrating the minds of politicians, the smart money is on all this getting underway before next summer in the easiest way possible – by digging a big hole in the ground at Clifton. The fill produced will generate revenue and shipping firms will have a definite signal as to what the future holds.

Experts are convinced this is the island’s best option: “Everyone will be involved in financing and operations as much as possible,” Martini said. “And breaking ground on the port will force people to think about better land use in the city. We have reached a watershed.”