Dear Sir,

Call me a grumpy old citizen if you want, but I’m not buying this opposition to the rebuilding of the Botanical Gardens maintenance yard.

If you go back and look at media coverage of the issue when it started at the beginning of 2013, you’ll see that it is a real NIMBY affair, initiated and, I guess, still directed by a family which bought and moved into a house nearby.

The family told the media that they had bought the Paget property too late to lodge Planning objections, which must mean they bought it in the knowledge that Planning had given permission for the redevelopment. The timeline goes like this:

In 2003, Hurricane Fabian damaged the depot, which had been in use at that location since the 1960s. Previously, in the early part of the 20th century, it had been used for a canning enterprise of some sort.

Despite the damage, until 2013, Works and Engineering made do as best they could.

Meantime, work was done to find an alternate site. Bermuda’s a tiny place – it’s a major problem to find space for places like the depot, as everyone knows. No suitable alternate site was found. Long term, the existing area alongside the Botanical Gardens is the most economical and most efficient site available.

Although, in the half-century the depot has been in operation, there have been no complaints from the neighbours about noise or traffic (or anything else for that matter), the Ministry designed the new one to reduce the visual impact of its buildings.

There used to be three very large buildings on the site. There was a three-storey building 130 feet long running east to west.

There was a double garage and heavy truck workshop with a paint spraying facility attached, 20 feet in height, 100 feet long by 100 feet wide. And there was a storage facility for chemicals and natural materials that was 20 feet wide by 100 feet long.

The roof levels were reduced in the new design. The only two-storey building now is on the northern border where the public toilets were. Because of the re-grading of the site, its roofline is effectively one storey above ground level. Other buildings are single storey.

The water tank has been built to reduce dependence on mains water. Water collected from the new buildings’ roofs will be stored there. It is the same height as the adjacent buildings to minimise its impact.

At the beginning of January, 2012, a Planning application to rebuild was submitted. No environmental impact study was needed because this was work being done to restore an existing site. The application was advertised later in January. No objection was received by the deadline.

Early in July, 2012, the Planning Board approved the submitted plans.

And in September of that year, a permit to do the work was issued.

Works and Engineering temporarily moved the function of the depot to Marsh Folly in 2013, and work began shortly after that. My guess is that it is now much too far along to even think about stopping and shifting the site elsewhere.

I think what people are missing about this site is the fact that it has become visible because Fabian knocked down most of the trees that sheltered it from sight, and the re-grading work has removed most of the rest of them. When the site has been finished, those trees and other plants will be replaced. Once again, the depot will all but disappear from sight.

I was amused to see the letter published recently from the anti-depot campaigner predicting danger on the roads once the depot resumes operation. The trucks move in and out largely early in the morning, before most people are on the roads, and mid-afternoon, when most people are at work, so the danger is just another attempt to invoke doom and gloom to stop the project in its tracks.

Maybe we should have a petition proposing that people should think just a little more about the good of the country, and a little less about protecting themselves.

If everyone in Bermuda created such a fuss when there were changes in their neighbourhood, we’d never make any progress at all.

J APPLESEED