Keep building height law – Issa
KEEP BUILDING-HEIGHT law or don’t use the name ‘New Negril’, resort stakeholders declare.
Operator of Couples Resorts Lee Issa says that he is of the view that whatever building ordinance currently exists within the resort town of Negril, it ought to apply to the proposed New Negril.
“If you are going to use the Negril name, I think you are going to have to respect the origins of Negril and how it should be built – low density, low rise. If the new ordinance is four storeys for the whole Negril, it should be four storeys for the New Negril. So if you are going to use the Negril name, we don’t want people saying, ‘Oh, you look like Cancun. How they can call this Negril’?” Issa told officials of the National Environment and Planning Agency last Tuesday during a meeting of the Negril Chamber of Commerce.
“So I think they need to be consistent. And the image of Negril, which has been made so popular over the years, is maintained and continues to flourish. If they are going to go 10, 12 storeys on the Hanover side, then they cannot call it Negril. They should call it something else,” Issa added, in making his comments following an address by NEPA’s senior physical planner, Isau Bailey at the meeting.
The NEPA official was also counteracted by Issa when he said that there was insufficient land space within the proposed New Negril area, in Hanover, and this would prevent hoteliers from “spreading out laterally.”
“That is not true,” Issa said. “The two properties that were sold recently in the Green Island area are quite large. So whoever the developer is, he could be prudent and smart and do a spread-out type of development than high rise because people are leaving big cities. They don’t want to come to another resort, where you have high rises.
“My advice is if they want to invest their money wisely, do it, spread out. Don’t go higher than four storeys and it will be much more feasible than high-rise buildings. We don’t have any shortage of land in Hanover. I know that much,” the hotelier added.
Former Chairman of the Negril Green Island Local Planning Authority Cliff Reynolds, who was in attendance at the meeting, also objected to the plans to discontinue using the same four-storey height limit when the New Negril is officially established, contending that despite the height limit and other measures being put in place when Negril was just being developed as a tourist destination, the environment has still undergone serious decay.
“For the record, I would like to make my objection to the word ‘unlimited’. I am a hundred percent sure there are better choices of words that can be used. And I am convinced that the use of the word ‘unlimited’ was used deliberately. I feel embarrassed listening when I heard the word unlimited,” Reynolds declared.
“I am thinking that our forefathers had a limit on buildings in Negril to preserve the aesthetics of Negril. But we now, in 2019, are opting to convince our local persons, now, to support unlimited buildings. This term ‘Old Negril’ and ‘New Negril’, I object to it. If you are going to leave it open to extended heights, I will object to using the name ‘Negril, attached to that name,” he said.
Hotelier Michael Russell, of White Sands resort, concretised the concerns, stating that he was petrified that the new development plans, would convert Negril into anothr ‘Downtown Ocho Rios” with an excess number of mass concrete structures.
“When I get leery is when I hear ‘modelling Nassau, modelling South Beach and large buildings’. I am very concerned that Cabinet is going to sanitise our product and it is only going to be one product. In all your scientific looks, you should look at what makes Negril unique and then go from there,” he said.