This week’s news that bids are likely to be forthcoming from at least two substantial companies for the development of new cruise ship berths in George Town leads us to hope that this will be just the first step in revitalising our capital city.

In recent decades George Town has been something of a conundrum – bustling with trade and commerce during the day, virtually deserted at night. In fact, not dissimilar to the archetypical financial district, the City of London.

At the same time, residents and visitors, and the merchants that serve them, have co-existed uneasily with heavy vehicle traffic to and from the cargo port. The impact of this during the daytime has been reduced to some extent by the limitation of port traffic to night time hours …for which the port workers are paid at enhanced rates.

However, cruise ship visitors especially still have to run the somewhat perilous gamut of the capital’s traffic-clogged streets.

We recently expressed the hope that the cruise ship project would lead to an overall reconsideration of the long term future of the entire downtown environment, including the cargo-handling facilities, pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and the needs of downtown merchants, businesses, and residents as well as visitors. This is, in our view, a once in a generation opportunity to transform George Town into the user-friendly centre it needs to be if it is to become a real asset to the Cayman Islands and our economy.

For an example of what can be achieved in terms of urban revitalization though appropriate development, one only has to look to an area that should be familiar to just about all local residents: downtown Miami.

Years ago, Miami’s historic Bayfront Park had deteriorated into a hangout for all sorts of undesirable elements of society. However, the development of Bayside Marketplace within Bayfront Park drove away the undesirable elements and now attracts crowds of customers to its many shops and restaurants of every conceivable description.

Not only have property values skyrocketed in the area, it has also attracted top quality new residential and commercial development, as well as public facilities such as the adjacent American Airlines Arena and the development of Miamarina at Bayside.

Residents and visitors to the area can enjoy an entire day’s leisure activities at Bayside, from shopping, eating out, boat trips around the Port of Miami and celebrity waterfront homes, to whatever cultural or sporting event is taking place at the Arena.

Who would not wish that George Town could offer our own residents and visitors a corresponding experience, instead of being looked at as somewhere to be avoided, especially on cruise ship days – and abandoned at night – unless one had pressing business in town or had no choice in the matter by being disembarked in town?

In particular, surely there is space available for the construction of a small marina along what is largely ironshore between the port and Pageant Beach, which could be used by visiting boats and residents.

Perhaps the existing tender operators, whose noses are going to be put out of joint by the pier construction could diversify into a harbour trip or water taxi service which could include transportation to the suffering Boatswain Beach Turtle Farm attraction.

Regrettably, there is not a lot of George Town’s historic architecture of any note left to preserve – most of it having already succumbed to the local tendency to erase what exists of our heritage – however, there is surely still much that can be done to create a unique Caymanian experience for residents as well as visitors to enjoy and take back memories for return visits by sea and air.

For the last couple of years, many in our tourism industry have been wringing their hands over the decline in visitor numbers that started with stay-over visitors and is now impacting the cruise sector as well.

It seems to us to be an exercise in futility to facilitate the berthing of the latest cruise ship leviathans each with as many as 6,000 passengers, if we are going to present them with the same pre-existing difficulties in George Town itself, now multiplied by at least an order of magnitude.

If their passengers do not enjoy their experience in the Cayman Islands, the cruise lines are going to by-pass us in any event – new berths or not.

What will be the point, therefore, in spending hundreds of millions of dollars in constructing the means to disembark these additional thousands of passengers daily if we do not at the same time address the issue of what to do with them once they step ashore?

More on this and another stimulus idea tomorrow.