Time to stop and take stock

Thursday, June 15, 2006

It appears to be all good news for the Cayman Islands: the mooted $100 million development for the Yacht Club area that will dwarf the Ritz-Carlton in scale; another yet unnamed project of similar proportion for West Bay; the previously announced Mandarin Resort development in the East and, already rising on the landscape, the Camana Bay project from the Dart organization.

While the indications are that we seem to be off on another boom cycle, concerns are being raised in some quarters on what this means for the future of this country, and justifiably so. It may be that government is treating the long-term ramifications of this unbridled development, but if that is the case no public pronouncements have come to so declare.

Pertinent questions prevail.

On the infrastructural side alone, the concerns have merit.  With Grand Cayman now approaching traffic gridlock on the western peninsula, sometimes even in the middle of the day, how are we going to cope with what is likely to be a significant additional burden to the already overloaded roadways?

Preliminary information indicates that the Dart project alone will mean an additional 1,000 work permits being issued; add that lot to our traffic woes and what picture comes to mind? 

Not to be defeatist, but even the proposed additional roadway from the East is only going to mean increased congestion when, inevitably, all those lanes converge at Prospect.

What will the additional traffic generated by the Yacht Club development mean for our traffic jams? What will be the West Bay Road story when Camana Bay and the other peninsula development kick in?

Roads are not the only concern.  Where will be the accommodations for all these additional workers be found, and, just as urgently, what will this fierce demand do for the already punitively high rents residents are facing in this post-Ivan Cayman?

Furthermore, in the midst of a huge initiative by Government to enhance our education facilities, will an enormous surge of virtually simultaneous development not mean that those facilities will be overloaded again almost before they are built?

There are additional questions (utilities; health services; pollution) but the fundamental implication is clear: Has enough consideration been given to the consequence of meteoric growth? The declared evidence suggests not, and the possible consequences for us all can be grave.

It is clearly time for the implementation of a sensible development plan to at least meet the year 2020, since we have failed abysmally the hope of the scores of so many volunteers - Caymanian and Expatriate - who put in thousands of hours to generate the Vision 2008 Plan, which was supposed to herald a workable model for Cayman's Success Story, while preserving the cultural and traditional preferences of this country.

The banner of controlled development has been floated before, but in light of the current congestion visible to all who live here, it requires more attention now than ever.  How much growth or enhancement can this small land mass absorb?  Do we know how many more resident bodies, and their children, we can accommodate over the next 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? Do we have projections on affordable housing for our young citizens?

The recent government announcement of a ceiling on cruise ship visitors is to be commended, but we need to hear more. We need to hear from our government that the concern goes beyond that, to the more far-reaching problems of land-based developments.  If we choose to, with the stroke of the pen, we can cut back overnight on the number of cruise visitors and restrain that impact; the land-based development, once in place, is there virtually forever.

It is time to stop and take stock of where we are and where we can sensibly go.

In the understandable need to generate more jobs and income, we have to guard against the real danger of choking on our own growth; the premonitions are already staring us in the face on a daily basis.

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