The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

“Star Acres”, its gargoyles and neighbouring luxurious government-owned Prospect Ridge properties, join “La Playa” in its grandness of yesteryear and the rotting wood, crumbling walls and overgrown foliage of current times.

Insight recently featured a two-part series on “La Playa”, a high-end government-owned house situated on the beach next to Goodman’s Bay and just a few feet from GoldWynn, a development by the Wynn Group. As mentioned, “La Playa” does not stand alone as a government-owned house left to deteriorate.

According to a well-placed Insight source, the houses featured in this week’s Insight were homes where the country’s former Chief Justices and other Justices resided in at some point. Three of these homes are situated on Sanford Drive, while another is on Skyline Drive.

The home on Skyline Drive, named “Star Acres” sits on some 84,000 square feet of land; equivalent to about two acres. And, three properties located on Sanford Drive are 75,000 square feet each; totalling some one and a half acres.

Visiting the properties, Insight saw run-down, dilapidated mansions sitting in the middle of overgrown jungles and rusted, padlocked gates. The only sound of life being birds chirping while enjoying the uninterrupted wilds.

It is estimated that these properties value approximately $5m apiece, putting the wastage at about $20m.

Insight’s source gave a clearer picture of how these houses came to be.

“These houses were once bought by the government to house the Chief Justice and other Judges,” he said. “Once they were appointed, the CJ and certain level justices lived in these homes. They were extremely high-end homes and all utilities and everything they came with, staff etcetera, was at the expense of the government. This is how we treated our senior judicial members.

“The government took a turn away from this custom and the houses became vacant. They remained vacant for a long time and then the government asked NIB to purchase them, assess them, fix them up and then put them up for sale. The purchases happened, but nothing else. I’m not sure what the downfall was on their part. Maybe NIB didn’t have the money, I’m not sure, but nothing happened after the purchases were made.”

Insight spoke to another source who actually visited one of the houses years ago. This source gave an assessment of what was seen at the time.

“Well I am not going to get into the politics of this to say which government did what and to egg on some blame game,” the source said. “Here’s what I will say … whichever government comes into power in 2022, ought to immediately look about these houses and stop the wastage of government money. You cannot in any way, just leave these million dollar properties to sit there and become dust. That is not being good stewards of the people’s property and money.

“I actually visited ‘La Playa’ and the house on Prospect Ridge … Skyline Drive. The one on Prospect Ridge was in bad shape at the time, but what was more interesting, there was a vagrant living in it. It was a major scene and the police had to get involved. I think there is someone living in ‘La Playa’ as well. If these properties were being properly maintained, this could not happen. ‘La Playa’s’ grounds are in worse shape than the interior.”

This source said the impression the team was left with was that the homes were in no way a priority of this government, even though many attempts were made by “underlings” to address the condition of them, given their value.

“As you wrote in this column before, a report was sent in to the Minister responsible for NIB, outlining the value and conditions of these properties and nothing happened,” the source said. “What else could be done? I don’t know! We expected the action to be taken and the recommendations either negotiated or followed, but nothing happened.

“What I don’t like is the way this government does business sometimes. They just ignore communications, ignore phone call messages, ignore people in general and expect situations to take care of themselves. That’s ludicrous! This is wasting public funds. This is wasting NIB’s money. This is being bad stewards of the people’s treasury. In other countries, this would be reason to hold an inquiry.”

One can only wonder, if Insight had not brought the state of these homes to public knowledge, would their decay and estimated values be swept under the rug and discovered again decades later by some tour guide pointing them out to our visitors as mere ruins of palatial mansions that once were.

One is also left to wonder, what other treasures of The Bahamas lie in disrepair, unnoticed, unaddressed with the public uninformed. This is wastage at its worst, with the government constantly reporting its “strapped for cash” status, $20m can do an awful lot.

“Star Acres” and the other three, once beautiful, homes can be seen from the Baha Mar golf course. Our tourists and residents have perfect views of the deplorable states of these homes, while they engage in a game of golf.

Sadly, these once magnificent properties have history attached to them. For example, “Star Acres” now overgrown by a native jungle, was once the home of retired Canadian banker, Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor and his wife Lady Williams-Taylor.

Sir Frederick was born in born in Moncton, New Brunswick on October 23, 1863 and was knighted in 1910. Prior to his retirement and relocation to The Bahamas, he was general manager of the Bank of Montreal.

While enjoying life here in The Bahamas, Sir Frederick and Lady Williams-Taylor were close friends of the Duke (formerly Edward VIII) and Duchess of Windsor. The once palatial “Star Acres” holds its spot in history as the site where Swiss-born American society artist Adolfo Muller-Ury painted a portrait of Lady Williams-Taylor in December 1917 just before her daughter’s wedding.

The Williams-Taylors’ granddaughter was the famous American socialite Brenda Frazier who was a little before her time, being considered a bit too gregarious for that era.

Sir Frederick died in Montreal, Quebec on August 2, 1945.

Today the home they created is being left to rot.

“These houses are not only eyesores, but imagine having your beautiful million dollar home situated beside these rusted, rotting buildings,” said the source. “This should be a complete embarrassment to the government. I have no proof of this but sometime back, I understood a high profile resident of this area wrote to the government about the state of these homes and what it was doing to her property.”

“It is not fair to people who have their dream homes in the area. As a matter of fact this is not fair to the people of The Bahamas because it is really their property and their money wasted. NIB was to fix these homes and sell them back to the government. I am not sure what happened either.”

What comes next from this source was mind boggling. How could this be allowed to happen?

“I remember once when someone had to visit one of the houses on Sanford Drive to assess, they actually found serious court papers in that house,” the source said to this writer’s astonishment. “There were boxes of court papers in the house. No wonder all these cases in court have missing documents and cases thrown out, et cetera. I don’t know what cases it was as that was never shared with me, but you heard me correctly … boxes of court documents … associated with various cases.”

One can argue that this particular government had the devastations of Hurricane Dorian and the pandemic COVID-19 to deal with, however, the people’s business must continue to be taken care of no matter what else is going on in the country. Surely the government is capable of multi-tasking.

If sidewalks could be built in the middle of a pandemic, when people are jobless and hurting, then these buildings could be restored giving countless architects, contractors, construction workers and security officers work. Thus pushing the economy a little further instead of casting gaze solely at the tourism market in hope.

An Insight source was so gracious to donate drone shots of these homes showing their state of disrepair and the overgrown acreages they are shamefully situated on. The government ought to do an inspection of these homes immediately as there are suspicions that people, possibly vagrants, are living in some of them.

Once again, Insight shared the drone pictures to the same prominent architect that assessed “La Playa”.

“They definitely can be salvaged,” the architect said, making an assessment. “The wood frame verandah and porches look a bit dilapidated. They may have to be demolished and redone. The roof flashing needs to be changed to copper or PVC. The shingles look good. One or two coats of white roofing epoxy should bring some life back to the roof. The masonry looks good.”

So again, a professional architect with many years of experience who has studied restoration in university and has worked on many restoration projects in The Bahamas and internationally, has deemed the people’s property salvageable. Who is listening to this architect though? Who is going to take action? Who is going to take up the mantle to restore the people’s property and give it the dignities in which it once basked?

“La Playa”, “Star Acres” and the accompanying unnamed high-end properties still look for attention and beckon to their viewers as the deafening silence from the government continues to permeate the air.