The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday pledged to “give teeth” to efforts to tackle Freeport’s derelict building woes, with Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) executives complaining: “Our hands are tied.”

Ginger Moxey, minister for Grand Bahama, told the island’s Business Outlook conference that the Davis administration was working with Freeport’s quasi-governmental regulator to amend the city’s environmental bye-laws so that such eyesores can be dealt with much more rapidly.

“Since coming to office, this administration has had numerous meetings with the GBPA with respect to issues impacting the island of Grand Bahama,” she said. “We are also working with the GBPA on environmental bye-laws, and giving teeth to the vexing issue of dilapidated structures.”

Freeport’s derelict building problems, which have been worsened by the impact of catastrophic hurricanes such as Dorian and Matthew, have left parts of the city looking extremely rundown. Besides being a potential turn-off for investors, other property owners are seeing the value of their assets undermined while the dilapidated structures themselves can be used to facilitate drugs and crime.

Nakira Wilchcombe, the GBPA’s vice-president of building and development services, in addressing the same conference, described dilapidated and derelict properties as “a sore topic” given the obstacles encountered in trying to tackle the issue.

Besides legal challenges launched by property owners to prevent their structures from being demolished, the Port Authority was also struggling to recoup its costs if it was forced to remove them itself. “Derelict buildings around the city have been a sore topic for us at the GBPA,” she said.

The GBPA executive said it first gives derelict property owners the chance to effect the necessary repairs, restoration and upgrades. When that fails to produce the desired results, it then does its own assessments as well as seeking opinions from the likes of external structural engineers to determine if such properties need to be torn down.

“If they suggest it should be demolished, we issue a notice to the owner,” Ms Wilchcombe said. “It is often subject to legal challenge, which adds an extra layer to the challenge we have to deal with these derelict structures.” She added that court actions by owners/landlords ensure potential demolitions “quickly become a lengthy process because it is embroiled in litigation”.

Taking encouragement from Mrs Moxey’s pledge to work with the GBPA on changing Freeport’s Bye-Laws Act, Ms Wilchcombe added that the quasi-governmental authority’s struggle to recoup demolition costs from derelict property owners was further frustrating efforts to clean-up the city. “Our hands are tied in many cases,” she said. “The key is amending legislation that allows us to do demolitions quicker.”

Mick Holding, the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce’s president between 2017-2019, backed the GBPA over the barriers it faces to combating derelict buildings. Besides often having difficulty in identifying a property’s true owner, he acknowledged the challenge such persons have in accepting the need for their buildings to be torn down.

“They’ve had a great deal of difficulty with that,” Mr Holding said, agreeing that the GBPA also faces problems when “it goes to the expense of demolishing buildings and not being able to recover that from the owner or anyone else.

“They’ve been trying to get the bye-laws amended, and have been working with the Attorney General’s Office for years now, literally years, to get the bye-laws changed to give them more freedom to demolish buildings,” he added.

Ms Wilchcombe, though, indicated that the GBPA - and Grand Bahama - had enjoyed more success in tackling the estimated 14,000 derelict vehicles left by Hurricane Dorian’s 20-foot storm surges. “We have never seen the unprecedented amount of cars we saw after Dorian. There were at least 14,000 cars around the island,” she said.

“It’s an enormous task that will not be done overnight. Two companies, budding entrepreneurs involved in the recycling business for derelict vehicles, contracted to collect, process and flatten these vehicles for export. One of the companies has been able to export close to 3,000 vehicles. Of the 14,000, there’s 3,000 less on the island.

“We want to promote efforts like that. We’re on our way to tackling this derelict vehicle issue. We need people to have patience with us. The large number on the island, it’s creating not a sprint but a marathon to deal with these issues.”

Philcher Grant, Grand Bahama Utility Company’s (GBUC) chief operating officer, and head of public affairs for the GBPA, said Dorian’s 20-foot storm surge and flooding had contaminated the wellfield that produced some 60-70 percent of the island’s potable water supply prior to the Category Five storm.

Asserting that Grand Bahama had one of the most “abundant water systems in the world” prior to Dorian, she added that the wellfields would likely take at least a generation to recover from their mauling. This drove Grand Bahama Utility Company to make the $5m reverse osmosis investment and ensure the water supplier has sufficient resilience to keep operating should a similar disaster strike in future.