The inauguration of the new sign gave us the opportunity to ask the Mayor about the stalled renovation of the Commercial Center in Downtown Belize City. That's the building that's been cleared out for months now so that it can be repaired as part of the Belize City House of Culture and Downtown Rejuvenation Project.
It was approved back in 2014, and it was launched in 2015, but since then no real work has started on the Center, which in a severe state of disrepair. Time is running out, since the funding for the project expires in February of 2018. So, we asked the Mayor if he and his team have made any progress in getting the roadblocks out of the way so that the renovation can start.
He told us that the City has only just finalized a loan with Heritage Bank, which will fund the project. The Mayor says that in less than 2 weeks, you should start to see rapid work on the Commercial Center:
Darrell Bradley, Mayor - Belize City
"Just today I signed the facility letter for Heritage Bank and we have finalize the loan which will fund that project. Part of that loan will allow the City Council to pay off recurrent debt, so that the City Council will no longer have these one-off debts."
"When I took the office of mayor, we owed Waste Control, we owed BML, we owed of several other litigations. We have steered the City Council to the point where we are no longer in court, but we do have these debt obligations from previous councils and part of that facility will see that we are paying off all of those and we will see the complete renovation of the commercial center. I want to show you the drawings, because I am very excited about that, so that I suspect that within maybe a week and half you will see crews going in there in relation to really ensuring that the full demolition of the interior has been completed. You will see when you go into the commercial the holes inside which was parts of the original design. Those will be closed up and the commercial center will represent two floors. The second and third floors will be the new city hall and the ground floor will be commercial, but in a week and a half, that project will be started. Again, I indicated to you that I sign the facility letter so that the loan has been approved. That was the part of the project that we were waiting on. The design has been completed. We've done all the areas of work in terms of looking at how spatially it's going to be design, concept and everything like that. We were just waiting on this approval and now the only thing that we are waiting on is for the security documents to be put in place and for us to be given our disbursement and you will see a rapid work. You will see a great degree of alacrity because that's a project that's one thing that I really want to push in advance of the next municipal election which would be March of next year, so that by that time you should have a fully rehabilitated commercial center which would be the new city hall for Belize City and that will signal our commitment to downtown that city hall is actually located in the heart of what is downtown Belize City."
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