Email

Print

Jules Vasquez reporting
In the next few days, RJB Construction will have finished the hot-mix pavement of Lake Independence Boulevard. The hot mix is the final touch for the road - a long ways off from how it looked back in August of 2014 when the bridge was being assembled.

Compare that to what the location looks like today, and the transformation is immediately apparent.

Christy Mastry - General Manager, Belize Infrastructure Limited
"The actual design and actual bidding process took place toward the end of last year around October and we got into construction around that time. We had some significant flooding in October which definitely held back some of the process, but we continued to work, so I think they'd been a little over 6 months now at the entire process. Right now, the bypass is certainly serving its intended purpose. It really was another link from the north to the south particularly for faster moving traffic coming from north going to west and back and forth and so I know that there are many people enjoying the bypass right now."

But the street is only a start: the master plan for this Lake Independence location has other key elements.

Christy Mastry - General Manager, Belize Infrastructure Limited
"Although the bridge started the initial development and the bypass of transportation really was the spur of why we were actually putting in this area. It started to come into play as a greater link for Belize City and what could potentially be in all of this acreage that the government has pretty much reclaimed as usable land. So from that point on we started working on the design of the road. We work on the design of the road anticipating future development within the area and we talk constantly about having certain civic buildings, certain government buildings, potential area for private sector development, a bus terminal. We have the Lake Independence Resource Center starting now. So anticipating the fact that this would be a larger scale development area similar to what we've seen happen along Coney Drive. We wanted to anticipate the traffic demand to really maintain the bypass of the traffic, the intention of the road initially, as well as outer lanes. Because these are two lanes in both direction with adjacent parking. So, it's a much wider road than we are used to seeing in anticipation of maintaining through traffic through the area that's cutting across to maintain north south and as well as to start bringing the east west connection coming from the neighborhood of Lake Independence that we see being the future user group of a lot of the services will be providing within the area."

The project thus far, which presently includes the bridge, the road, the drains, the sidewalks and other infrastructure works cost 3.2 million dollars.