Editorial | What is the plan for communities around Heroes Park?

When the coronavirus caused Parliament, after the September election, to convene at the Jamaica Conference Centre rather than at its home at Gordon House, Prime Minister Andrew Holness used the opportunity to press the case for the new legislative building planned for National Heroes Park. Gordon House, as then structured, just could not accommodate the physical distancing required by COVID-19, which further highlighted the inadequacy of its facilities for legislators and staff to operate efficiently.

Mr Holness indicated his Government’s intention to proceed with the project, but did not say whether it would keep its established timetable of having the building completed by March 2023. Something else that the administration has not done is to speak with clarity about its plans for the communities around National Heroes Park, which should be a matter of urgency now that the environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the project has been published.

For while this newspaper still entertains reservations of Heroes Park as the site for the parliament building – rather than being left as green space for adjacent communities – there may be an opportunity for the Government to use it as a springboard for a model urban-renewal scheme for others in the city and elsewhere in Jamaica.

Indeed, it is an issue on which Pearnel Charles Jr, Mr Holness’ minister for housing and urban renewal – and nominally, also for the environment and climate change – should be keen to engage, given the substantial damage done over the past month to private properties and public infrastructure by landslides and floods triggered by rain from passing storms. Among the reasons for this catastrophe is the increasing numbers of Jamaicans who encroach on watersheds and floodplains, sometimes in officially sanctioned developments, to set up homes.

Much of this is driven by an effort by people to escape decayed and dysfunctional urban communities such as those around National Heroes Park – Allman Town, Fletcher’s Land, Jones Town, Hannah Town, and the southern end of Cross Roads – home to, according to the impact assessment on the proposed parliament building, about 33,000 people, approximately 56 per cent of whom are within a one-kilometre rim of the Heroes Park.

LITTLE DISCUSSION AND CLARITY

The debate over the intention to slice 11.4 acres off the 50-acre park for the parliament compound has centred on whether the city’s last significant bit of undeveloped land ought not to be left as a green recreational area for the nearby communities. Thus far, there has been little discussion, and no clarity, about what is to happen to the residents, who, based on the results of focus groups quoted in the EIA, feel that any ‘consultation’ with them is primarily about decisions that have already been taken.

Seeping through those discussions, too, was fear of displacement, especially among people who live in the communities closest to the park. These concerns arose despite the researchers deciding not to directly address the matter of displacement in their discussions with residents. “Since the project was silent on displacement, the consultants felt it best not to trigger unnecessary anxiety among community members by addressing a speculative issue,” the document said.

This question, however, will not long be speculative if the administration pursues its original plan of not only building a new parliament building, but developing the areas around the park into what Mr Holness called a ‘government campus’ of myriad ministries and departments. Having a contiguous arrangement of government buildings around the oval may be aesthetically pleasing. There are, however, serious questions to be asked whether in Jamaica’s circumstances – environmental and economic – that would be the best, and most logical, use of resources.

SIGNIFICANT SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Moreover, the displacement of thousands of residents in these communities would probably lead to further encroachment on agricultural land, as would be the case if the Government were to go through with its plan for a 17,000-home city on what the National Environment and Planning Agency described as the island’s “most fertile, A1” soil, at Bernard Lodge, St Catherine. Or, there will be the establishment of new suburban settlements that forfeit efficiencies inherent in well-structured cities.

The communities around Heroes Park have significant social problems. However, they have basic infrastructure, including water, a road structure, a basic sewage system and in many instances, a fair or better housing stock. According to the impact analysis, that is the case with 43 per cent of the homes in Cross Roads, 46 per cent in Allman Town, and 44 per cent in Fletcher’s Land. In Hannah Town, where only 10 per cent of the homes are in good condition, 52 per cent of household heads own the land on which their homes stand. In Allman Town, it is 40 per cent

In the circumstances, it cannot be beyond the imagination of Jamaica’s policymakers and their technocrats to fashion initiatives that marry the substantial equity residents already possess in these communities with private capital, while using public funds and the institutions of the State to leverage these investments to the level of capital needed for a transformative urban-renewal project that benefits everybody.