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"Nassau is no longer the little city we once knew"
Related to country: Bahamas

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A new historic Nassau:
By THEA RUTHERFORD,Guardian National Correspondent:
Nassau, Bahamas -



Valderine Barnett,77, remembers when they used to call Rawson Square "the park." When watching the ships sail into port on a Sunday afternoon was as entertaining as going to the movies on a Friday night.

Bay Street was a street you could not avoid, its bustling sidewalks held the stores that you needed to go about the business of daily life.

There was G. R. Sweeting on the corner of Charlotte and Bay Streets for your clothing and fabric, or the Park Store on Parliament Street. There was J P Sands for groceries and the Stop n Shop for books and pencils, mats for the house and linoleum for the kitchen.

And who could forget the market teeming with fresh produce and even fresher meat slaughtered at the abattoir on the grounds. "Everything was on Bay Street," Barnett reminisced with a relative recently. "Bay Street used to be bubbling."

While the number of cruise ship passengers strolling along the sidewalks of the souvenir shop hub keeps things at a steady boil on old Bay for visitors more than 60 years later, certain obstacles have kept the offerings of the city's central vein at only a simmer for locals.

With no shortage of places to shop from East to West in the steadily growing city, the central street has long lost its place as a one-stop shopping haven for a variety of goods.

Congestion on the one-way thoroughfare, often clogged by public buses belching inky exhaust, is enough to keep local shoppers who are forced to scavenge for places to park their cars away. The heavy duty trucks that lumber along the road like unwieldy pachyderms only add to the muddy cocktail of out-of-control traffic and limited parking.

"Nassau is no longer the little city we once knew," said Nassau Tourism and Development Board (NTDB) chairman, Charles Klonaris, at the 2008 Bahamas Business Outlook on Wednesday.

"It lacks diversity and density and barely functions responsibly during the day. At night it closes its doors, its occupants retreat to the suburbs to eat and sleep each evening. The city of Nassau is abandoned and in fact is not as much a city as a collection of deserted buildings. Crime raging from armed robbery to drug pedaling to harassment, littering, vagrancy and illegal hawking and begging post serious threats to the public - both local and foreign - as they attempt to enjoy the downtown experience."

Troubled by the transformation of the city center, the NTDB has been at work creating ways to re-invent historic Nassau. And although plans for the redevelopment of Bay Street have been on the government's drawing board for years, Klonaris presented the group's ideas for accomplishing the goal at the Business Outlook.

The center of cultural expression, the city should be structured in a way that is not only aesthetically pleasing but functional for residents and visitors. Drawing on historical references to the way ancient Athenians perceived the city, Klonaris said, "The ancient Athenians - true urban knights - delighted in the everyday drama of human encounters. For them the city was the supreme instrument of civilization, the tool that gave men common traditions and goals even as it encouraged their diversity and growth."

According to its plans, the NTDB sees the potential for the re-emergence of the pre-eminence of the city structure in the daily lives of its citizens in downtown Nassau.

The board recommends a relocation of the commercial port; a comprehensive traffic and parking plan that includes the establishment of bus depots on the fringes of the downtown area and the creation of a management authority that handles security, environmental care, infrastructure improvements, landscaping, vendor management and transportation.

"The management authority is envisioned as an independent public partnership which would provide one central administrative and representative entity to guide the redevelopment efforts and the continued management and maintenance of the city of Nassau," said Klonaris. The authority would bring the functions, now entrusted to various government agencies, under one umbrella.

The chairman called the efforts necessary to create a city we can all be proud of.

But at the center of it all was the city's cultural role.

"What we need is a cultural sector that makes the city feel vibrant and alive with energy and creativity around the clock," said Klonaris.

A city, though evolved, much like the one many of the older folk remember as a crucible of life.

January 12, 2008 | 6:16 PM Comments  0 comments

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