A year and a half after Hurricane Lisa, the courthouse has finally been restored to its former glory. The storm rendered the building unfit to use and lower court matters were moved to a makeshift courthouse on Coney Drive, while High Court matters were heard at the old National Bank of Belize building on Regent Street.
This meant that attorneys, claimants, defendants, and accused persons had to be shuttling between several areas. But now with the repairs finished, judicial matters in the city can be handled in one central location.
Courtney Menzies was at the opening ceremony today and has this story.
This was the courthouse after Hurricane Lisa in 2022. The roof had blown off, and rains had destroyed several courtrooms and light fixtures. The Magistrates were moved to another section of the building, but then the ceiling over the main staircase collapsed - luckily when no one was around.
And that wasn't the only disaster that the centuries-old building had withstood:
William Lindo, President, Bar Association
"This building as some of you might know has a storied past having been destroyed on Saturday, the 17th August 1918 by fire and later rebuilt under the reign of King George V to later house on the upper portion, the premiere's house, the National Assembly, the Cabinet room and the Ministry of Finance."
"Some decades later, Hurricane Hattie hit the old capital between 27th October and 1st November 1961 and claimed approximately 319 lives. This building was not spared from the wrath of Hattie and had to be repaired and rebuilt once again. Belmopan was created thereafter and this building then went on the house the office of the Chief Justice and other justices of the Supreme Court on the upper portion and the Treasury Department remained on the lower portion until circa 2006 when the lower portion was once again refurbished and retrofitted to house the Magistrate's Court. Both courts remained until Hurricane Lisa arrived on the shores of Belize City on the 2nd November 2022. The building, having suffered at the hands of natural disasters once again was rendered unfit."
And so the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Housing launched into action and the Chief Engineer explained that they tried to keep the original design of the building - and were able to maintain about 60% of it.
Evondale Moody, Chief Engineer, MIDH
"The idea was the try and retain most the aesthetics that the original building had because we could not change that and we did not want to change it because we wanted to maintain the integrity of the original structure so starting with the roof, we had to ensure that we constructed a new roof because the entire roof was gone and so we have a new steel structure roof in place, we believe it's well suited for the conditions that we have in Belize in terms of hurricanes and tropical storm. In respect to the building structure itself, we had to do a lot of work in terms of the interior of the building, so what we did was basically gutted out the entire structure and only left the wall standing and we had to go to a new drawing plan in terms of the new layout for the building in terms of the lower flat and also the first floor and so we did that in consultation with the Chief Justice to gather from her what exactly she wanted in terms of courtrooms and the different rooms we have in the entire building."
But aside from a new building, in her speech, the Chief Justice spoke about the ongoing plans to enhance the judicial system in Belize.
Louise Blenman, Chief Justice
"It is essentially that a democratic country such as Belize has a stable and predictable justice system as that which exists. So today the commissioning of this newly renovated building, quite coincides with and compliments numerous transformative and far-reaching judicial initiatives in Belize which are ongoing and have already yielded tangible results."
"Our plan seeks to establish the senior courts as a court of excellence in keeping with established standards. The plan focuses on implementing new and improved methodologies in processes to aid in case backlog reduction while implementing advance technological systems to enhance the delivery and access to justice."
"As recently as a year ago, it was not usual to find cases as old as 12 years in both the civil and criminal division of the high court. Our Court of Appeal was not spared of this backlog difficulty. This untenable situation was exacerbated by the increase of litigation in the high court which made the docket to each judge extremely high and public confidence low as you will expect, an increase in the complement of justices necessitated the number of courtrooms and offices for judges and support staff. We are therefore elated with this high quality accommodation and look forward to occupying our new quarters which can only enhance our productivity."
The cost of the renovations was 2.9 million dollars, out of a budget of 3 million.
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