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Kings Park Consternation Over Apartment
posted (January 26, 2016)
Peace and quiet: that's what several residents from the Kings Park residential area are demanding. Over the years, there have been road upgrades and construction of businesses in the area of "A" Street and the residents say the heavy traffic, the noise and congestion has robbed them of their serenity. They say they have been advocating for years to try and restore and maintain the tranquility in their community and now things are coming to a head with the construction of a towering apartment mega complex right in their neighborhood. Today the Mayor of Belize City Darrell Bradley and his council members met with a few residents and they discussed solutions and recommendations. We spoke with one concerned Kings Park resident and Mayor Bradley and they told us how they are moving forward.

Laura Smith, Resident of King's Park
"The zoning is the main proirity. Many of the residents have enjoyed a peaceful neighborhood for quite a long time. It was the inital intention of the government planning where there were covenents involved - that it would be primarily residential and single family. So the zoning has been toss around for a while the different administrations and so its finaly come to the point where it looks like we may finally get our zoning approved, which will just preserve the character and the integrity of the neighborhood."

Courtney Weatherburne
"So thats the main idea behind it right? The residents want to maintain their peace, the tranquility. Describe to us some of the issues that you all faced daily? you were saying about parking, about the noise, about comercial take over in that zone. Tell us about some of those issues that you guys face daily?"

Laura Smith, Resident of King's Park
"Well, obviously in this day and age, commercial endeavors require parking, because everybody drive these days and so if you have a commercial business, especially if its high impact like a restaurant or like 6th Street has become a very high traffic, extremely commercial. The Mayor referred to it as mixed. But it's not mixed anymore. It's primarily commercial. It's very busy the traffic and the noise and the garbage pollution. It becomes difficult for the neighbors to live with it. So this is what we are trying to avoid, that business encroachment continues and then you lose the residents altogether. I heard that most of the residents on 6th Street are now looking to sell, because it's becoming so difficult. It's become so bad that they had to make it a one-way street. And when I was growing up, it was only Mr. Godfrey and his little grocery shop, which nobody minded. So as long as it's a low impact business I don't think the neighborhood minds. With this new residential high rise on Princess Margaret Drive and E Street, the concern is that it's an extremely high building. 6 floors I think he said. Its 71 feet high on the flight path. So its concerning to the neighbors that if there is any kind of pilot error, it would be tremendous tragedy to take place there."

Darrell Bradley, Mayor
"The genesis of this is that there have been proposed zoning bi-laws for the King's Park area going on to 6 years. This is something that was taken up by an earlier council and it was for whatever reason not passed into law so that it can be enforced. And there has been a series of - the residents term it as encroachment in an area which is by and large residential still and recently this came up as a result of them building a large 6 story structure on Princess Margaret Drive. One of the things that we agreed upon is that this zoning regulation should be taken up again as a matter of some degree of urgency. The council took the step of voting to create a sub-committee of the council. That committee will be chaired by Councilor Theus. It will have representation from Ms. Mackenzie who is the legal advisor to the Belize City Council. We've also put 3 members of the community on that committee as well and what they will do is that they will put together a strategy in relation to taking this to passage. With respect to the particular building, we want to put this in a larger context. This is a problem that we have had perennially when we engaged with the central building authority, of the central building authority and of the local building authority and what happens is that many people and in this particular case, they go to the central building authority and they bypass the local building authority. One of the things that the local building authority looks in terms of granting approval for any kind of structure is the context in which that structure is held. So if an area is primarily residential or it's of a particular character, we are going to require certain additional steps be done in addition to just ensuring that the building is technically sound."

A draft regulation has already been devised pertaining to zoning. Other issues like confirming the exact special dimensions for the Kings Park area and collaborating with the Central Building Authority will be addressed in upcoming meetings. As you heard, a committee has been formed to deal with these concerns. They will meet on Monday. There will also be a public consultation session in 2 weeks.

Now in the broader context, this discussion is a reflection of the complexity of the Belize City landscape - the zoning of particular areas, the layout of businesses in small communities and other major problems. Bradley told us it's all about focusing on urban development.

Darrell Bradley, Mayor
"This discussion has to be taken into the large context of urban planning on a whole within Belize City. This is something that we have as a council been looking at quite forensically and analytically. We have dealt with a significant amount of projects like Cariled. Cariled, one of their focus is urban economic development planning. They look at it more from the point of view of job creation and economic development, but you are looking at the special design of the city and how you are laying out the city. So that all of this is part of a larger vision for Belize. When we talk about the upgrades to the Northern Highway, it's because we want that to be zoned as a commercial area, so that you don't have banks in downtown Belize City where the streets are so narrow or you don't have a huge department store on 6th Street where the parking can't sustain it. That traditionally Belize City has developed in kind of an adhoc way, but I do believe that the council has focus in terms of the infrastructure upgrades and a lot of our sensible approaches. Not that we haven't made mistakes, but in really looking at urban planning as a focus of the council."

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