The Memorial Park was re-designed and re-opened years ago, but, commercially, it has been a failure. Most of the booths remain un-occupied and you wouldn't say that it's abuzz with activity. Today Mayor Bradley shared the new plan for filling the booths and utilizing all the space the Memorial Park has to offer.
Darrell Bradley, Mayor - Belize City
"How do we let the Memorial Park be the focal point and one of the concerns that were raised in a series consultations with vendors in the area is that the park, the booths that were existing in the park could not adequately accommodate the type of vending aid so that it was felt that booths needed to be renovated and so what was done is that the original booths which were in the park, which were very small, which were painted grey, which made you think of a dreary day and the rain coming down, The idea is that we would renovate that entire area and again this is through the generosity of BTB in partnership with the Belize City Council and so what you are doing is that you are creating a focal point in the base of the park with these Kiosks so that you are going to have a craft market or a craft 
community. A major player in this is the lead unit of the Belize City council lead by Ms. Barbara Elrington and she is actually looking at how you create a cluster of craft activities there. You would notice that there are vendors that are behind Mirab and the idea is that we want to move those vendors from behind Mirab into those booths and we want to encourage the foot traffic from the existing cruise port into memorial park. You are going to have a significant amount of economic activity in the park so presently we have what he called an anchor tenor. You have the Boar House in there. They do a very nice breakfast, they do very nice food in the park. We are also thinking that the craft market could bring another layer of commercial activity in the park and we are looking at 1 or 2 other projects that we want to make memorial park the focal point for the entire Forth Street tourism zone. The booths will create an avenue for the economic opportunity and the plan is that the people who are now on the street will actually be relocated into the park and we are going to encourage traffic from the cruise port now into memorial park."
The Belize City Council and the Belize Tourism Board are planning to form an operation committee to work together on the Memorial Park venture.
Email
Print