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Those of you who frequent the market area in Belize City might have noticed a cement structure that is being built over the canal on East Collet. The structure It would have looked very oddly out of place if it weren’t for the Conch Shell fish market which also sits over the canal not too far from this one. But unlike the fish market, this structure is not for public use. It will be a private bakery business owned by Chinese proprietors, we are told. A few weeks ago there were some concerns expressed about the existence of the structure, but according to the mayor there is nothing at all shady about it. 

Darrell Bradley - Belize City Major
"One of the problems there is space and one of the things where everybody that has looked at it has looked at the fact that there is an increasing amount of pressure to allow permission for people to vend over the water; we get proposals like that all the time. The critique and concern that I have heard including people who have raised it in relation at public meetings that we have had is that on that side of the bridge there is still a recognition that there is a significant amount of residential type properties and if you're going to locate a structure like that you should have located it on the other side where the market is, where the bus stop is and its commercial anyway. If I’m not mistaken when I looked into this matter I was informed that structure was supposed to be larger than it actually is now and it was reduced in size because it was felt that you did not want a structure that was too big."

Emanuel Pech
"But the structure received all approval from the city council."

Darrell Bradley - Belize City Major
"Well it’s being built so that it had received approval; my understanding is that when people raised a concern we did issue a stop order and I understand that stop order would have been in place for the next 3 of 4 days. The persons came in we had like a back and forth in relation to understanding exactly the issue in relation to the structure and understanding how it would impact members of the community and I also understand that there was some concerns that if you are locating certain type of business there; if it's like a food business or that kind of thing over a canal. Those issues were raised in relation to the structure; some concerns that came from the members of the public and also from our parallel agencies that we worked with but in terms of the structure itself technically speaking it’s a good structure." 

This same structure was allegedly the bone of contention which reportedly caused that dispute between the Mayor’s father Joe Bradley and the City Engineer.