Government should take over City Hall

Feb 15, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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It makes no economic sense to be spending almost G$800M to restore City Hall. None whatsoever!
Last September, Central Government rushed to the rescue of City Hall by signing a G$780M contract for the restoration of City Hall. Why spend such an enormous sum of money when with G$100M you can construct a new City Hall and copycat architectural features of the historic building?
Is this not what restoring does in any event? Rebuild in the same design without having to demolish the original structure?
Why spend almost G$800M to rebuild something which will most likely also be allowed to rot and deteriorate as the present structure did. Unfortunately, this decision is not simply a financial one; there are heritage considerations to be taken into account.
According to Lloyd Kandasammy, the structure which we now know as City Hall was declared open on the 1st July, 1889 and has been labelled as the Caribbean’s finest building. He described it as representing Gothic Revival architecture from Great Britain’s Victorian era.
He cites the late Lennox Hernandez as describing the building as a three-storied rectangular structure whose entrance is highlighted with a high squared tower, and with a mahogany staircase connected to the first and second floors. The tower, it is said. is “capped by a square pyramidal flat-topped spire with four conical pinnacles.” There is no doubt that it is a very special and unique structure in the Caribbean and one which all Guyanese should be proud of.
Well, Guyanese were so proud of this building that, like many other colonial structures, they simply let it deteriorate to the point where an enormous sum, almost the combined market value of the land and the structure on it, has to be spent on restoration works.
City Hall was left to go into disrepair because the City simply could not afford to maintain it. And over the years, it deteriorated to the point where had it not been a building of historic and architectural significance, it would have been condemned and pulled down.
It is not too late to do so and save the taxpayers a fortune. With G$100M a replica of City Hall can be constructed. But the government knows that if City Hall collapses, it will not be forgiven by the local middle class who have more than a sentimental attachment to heritage structures and somehow feel that government has an obligation to reverse years of neglect at one swish.
They conveniently ignore that those responsible for the upkeep of City Hall have not done enough to ensure that it did not reach the terminal state in which it is at present. City Hall is administered by an APNU municipality. The AFC is not part of the management of City Hall having been dumped by their senior Coalition partner in the 2018 local government elections.
But do not ask the APNU to accept blame for the poor state of the City even though the main party of the APNU has controlled City Hall for more than 50 years and should be held accountable for the deterioration of the structure.
But that aside, the key question is how do you maintain a G$800M structure? Even at 10 percent maintenance costs each year, this runs into G$80M per year which is beyond the financial means of City Hall.
The government therefore cannot be serious if it intends, after the high-cost restoration works are completed, to hand the maintenance of management of this structure back to City Hall. Twenty years from now, we will be back where we started because City Hall simply does not have the resources, and is not ever likely to find the resources, to maintain the restored structure. It makes no sense spending all that money to restore the building and then hand it over to City Hall.
Upon completion of the restoration works, the government should take over the entire structure and convert it to a tourist attraction. It should charge schoolchildren, other members of the public and tourists a fee for guided tours of the building. This will allow the building to earn some money, but that definitely will not be able to earn enough to repay that G$800M or to even pay for the yearly cost of maintenance.
From a strictly financial point-of-view, the government has to seriously ask itself whether it can continue each year, to spend enormous sums on maintaining buildings, which have been designated as national monuments by the National Trust.
It is time to consider seriously the costs of keeping these structures intact. Since there is likely to be public disaffection should these old colonial buildings be left to rot further, it would be best if a National Trust Fund is started which would allow for the public, who so love and adore these buildings, to put their money where their mouths are.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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