Dear Sir,

Bermudians once reflected on emancipation not only as a date, but as an unfinished project. Southlands stands before us as a test of whether we can transform a landscape that may have been shaped by exploitation into one that actively advances prosperity.

Hence, I write in support of thoughtful, community-benefiting development at Southlands — not “development” as in paving over what is green, but development as in repairing dereliction, investing in people and reinterpreting a site whose very stone may bear the imprint of slavery and indentured labour.

First, let us be honest about the place, which is only a seven-minute walk away from where I live. The walk was shorter — before those townhouses ate open space.

Southlands is a 37-acre park spread on both sides of South Road in Warwick, with beach frontage, wooded quarries, overgrown gardens and a cluster of historical buildings, including a listed main house.

Much of it has fallen into ruin through decades of neglect: the main house is derelict and invasive growth has choked parts of the grounds.

The Government’s 2025 draft Southlands Park Management Plan describes it plainly and proposes phased improvement, reuse of buildings, and limited amenities consistent with its Class B “amenity park” status.

That same plan recognises the need for revenue-generating potential and educational programming so the park can be sustained. These are not speculative talking points; they are the existing, published intentions for the site.

Second, we must place Southlands in Bermuda’s longer story. The property and house’s earliest fabric dates to the 18th century and early 19th century — within the period when enslaved Africans and their descendants were compelled to build this island’s homes, walls and roads.

Quarrying Bermuda stone was foundational work and the Government’s own traditional building guide notes that “Bermuda’s first stonecutters were often slaves or indentured”. The quarries that define Southlands — celebrated later as “quarry gardens” — sit in that wider reality. To leave the site to moulder is to leave that history unexamined and that labour unacknowledged.

Development that stabilises, interprets and reuses the place can finally tell the truth about who built Bermuda and at what cost.

Third, development is already at the table. Recent applications propose, among other things, a small café at the southern end, the renovation and reuse of derelict buildings —including the main house as a visitor centre — and carefully managed recreation, such as a tree canopy/zipline experience contemplated in the draft plan.

Some argue we should “pause and reassess” or reclassify the park to make development harder. I respect that instinct, although the recent talking points and commercials against development are misleading.

Little of Southlands is to be developed, not the whole or more fertile parts of the property. Bermudians fought to save Southlands from greater development and “won” a land swap that made it ours. But “ours” must mean more than a locked-up ruin behind invasive brush.

The question is not development versus preservation; it is whether we will choose justice-centred development that preserves what is significant, while delivering tangible benefits to future Bermudians today and tomorrow.

Get rid of the zip line, but here is what that could look like — entirely within the “minimum commercial activity” standard of a Class B Amenity Park and aligned with the management plan’s call for reuse, education and revenue sustainability:

• A heritage and environmental learning centre in the restored main house, with paid guides and apprenticeships for young Bermudians in heritage carpentry, masonry, cultivation and museum studies. Exhibits would plainly connect Southlands’ quarry landscape to the island’s building traditions and to the coerced labour that shaped them, alongside their stories of resistance and emancipation

• Set-asides for microbusinesses in any café, vendor kiosks, guided-tour concessions or event services at Southlands. Procurement targets and lease preferences — eg, 60 per cent minority-owned vendors; living-wage standards — should be written into operating agreements, not left to chance. This is how a public park becomes a platform for intergenerational wealth, rather than just a pretty backdrop for those that already have

• A paid green-jobs corps to remove invasives, stabilise cliffs and maintain trails, offering certified training that transfers into private-sector landscaping, conservation and construction employment. Young people need first jobs; the park needs care. Tie the two together, to even create a revenue share that funds scholarships at the Bermuda College for students in the trades and environmental sciences

• Mobility and access improvements that prioritise bus stops, bike parking and safe walking paths over large car parks, so the benefits of Southlands do not hinge on car ownership, although a larger parking space to the south of South Road would be beneficial

These ideas are not indulgences; they are answers to measurable inequities. Young Bermudians consistently have the highest unemployment rates by category. We can debate macro-solutions elsewhere; at Southlands, we can design micro-solutions now — explicit pipelines into paid training and “us owned” enterprises in a public asset.

When we set standards for who benefits from a park’s modest revenue streams, we do not politicise nature; we decolonise public space.

People will worry that any commercial activity risks a slippery slope. That is why the Bermuda Plan and the National Parks framework matter; they already limit Southlands to amenities that are “essential to the maintenance, conservation, enhancement or enjoyment of the park”, with the “minimum of commercial activity”.

The existing draft plan sits within those lines. The job for residents is to push the plan to do more for people — especially young people — without doing more to the landscape. That is a balance we can strike because the categories and policies are already in law.

Others will say, “Leave the ruins as they are and history will remain visible.”

But rot is not remembrance. A collapsing listed building does not honour enslaved stonecutters; stabilising and reusing it to teach their craft and tell their story does.

Overgrown quarries do not “speak for themselves”; curated trails, trained local guides and paid internships do.

Neglect is not neutral. It quietly privileges those who can afford to enjoy “wild” spaces while the economic dividends of public land flow to no one in particular.

Development with guardrails can redirect those dividends to the people historically excluded from them.

Finally, timing matters. Recent coverage has amplified calls to slam the brakes.

Refine the design: minimise parking footprints, site the café where it serves beachgoers without intruding on sensitive habitat and scale any thrill elements, so they are canopy-lite and ecology-led. But do not retreat to inaction.

Southlands has been already “saved” once and who benefited?

The unfinished work is to convert that victory into a living, working place that grows opportunity and tells the truth. Truth, like less than 2 per cent of the present property footprint is to be developed.

If we are serious about removing the remnants of slavery or economic injustice in Bermuda, we should not pretend they disappeared when they closed the Southlands gate years ago. We should confront them by name, in stone and story, and build institutions that reverse their economic effects.

Southlands can be that place: a park that preserves beauty, yes, but also a campus for trades and truth-telling, a revenue engine for entrepreneurs, and a model for how public land can knit justice into the landscape.

That is the real development Bermuda deserves.

SAM BRANGMAN JR

Warwick