How would rebuilding on private property affect traffic? There’s already a rule that trailer trucks can’t be on Bay Street during certain hour.

Would you reinvest in something that isn’t bringing you any returns? Or in something that you are uncertain what the plans for the area are? Some of those buildings have been derelict for over two decades. Maybe the owners are up in age or have died with no other (interested) family. So government must now step in and do an assessment. Determine how best to deal with the property. Make efforts to contact owners through the media and other sources. Putting notices on the properties and acquiring and reselling after a specified time has passed. Until then they may have to fence or border them in for being an eyesore and for public safety.

So unless and until government and/or it’s agents can give a clear picture of what the New Bay Street is to be, the new zoning restrictions ) solicitation is to become legal) and building codes, then you can’t just expect property owners to pump hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions e even. Into their properties, not knowing the outcome.

There has been talks and suggestions as to how to revive Bay Street and make it more attractive and appealing to guests and visitors and more profitable to persons who own property or operate businesses or n the area. One idea that had been floating is to build a broad walk from the Bridge on Potters Cay to the Pointe development where persons can walk or use scooters or mopeds to get back and forth. The water from will be redeveloped to host water taxis, marinas and private boats from the neighboring Paradise Island. Buildings on the waterfront was to be redesigned to face the water and will include condos, townhouses other rentals retail stores ,restaurants and clubs and other ancillary businesses. The idea was to stop everything on Bay Street from coming to a stop and dying at 5:00 pm.

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And as the cruise ship industry grew, the stores on Bay Street dwindled. Many stores closed their doors and some were converted into souvenirs and 3for $20 t-shirt shops. The clientele on Bay Street had shifted from a broad intermix of international customers and Bahamians, to mostly lower income cruise ship passengers who only wanted a cheap something to take back to show friends at home that they had been to The Bahamas. And as the cruise ships grew in size and included more amenities on board the cruise ship passengers appetite for Bay Street became smaller and smaller. And so the city of downtown Nassau degraded into what it is today.

Before you try to bring Bay Street back to life, you have to find out what killed it. Firstly Bay Street was a shopping Mecca for the rich and famous the mix of stores included top name jewelry stores, fine linen and China stores perfume galleries and a mix of clothing and shoe stores that cater from casual wear to top formal stores that could out the prime minister, the First Lady all MPs and everyone else. Then as happened in many major cities, two malls popped up in the country and many of the famous stores chose to relocate to either or both malls. Other stores chose to remain on Bay Street only to face a losing battle where the once eloquent and charming Bay Streets was falling into a cheap flea market and losing popularity faster than you ca say ‘No Bahamians.’ A number of store keepers felt that the young )and sometimes rowdy) Bahamians was part of the reason for the downturn of business downtown and hence they encouraged police and other officials to ‘chase these natives off Bat Street.’ It was not unusual to see police forcing young men especially, to board buses and to leave downtown ‘else get lock up.’ And some were locked up for loitering. If you went downtown and was stopped by police and couldn’t give a reason you could be arrested for loitering. If you went downtown too often you could also be stopped be police and even be banned for ‘being suspicious.’ But little did the shopkeepers realize that the same people they were banning from downtown were also their customers. They were the ones that spent money bwhen there were no ships in the harbor and no guests in the hotel.

Government may need to take an inventory of the workforce to determine exactly who is unemployed and what type jobs are needed. Young females are the least on the unemployment list simply because they are the easiest employable, they are amongst the most active job seekers when unemployed and it is easy for them to transition from one job to the next. On the other hand young males are highest on the unemployment list. They find themselves working on jobs that are not continuous, like construction and the time between finishing one job can be months to years, Young men are also highest among the discouraged workers and, unlike their female counterparts, they don't fancy beating the pavement day after day searching for jobs. many prefer to go job seeking on their phones or online. And a one stop labor/employment desk set up in various areas will be most beneficial to this group. Where they submit their documents and a third party is involved in getting the information to potential employers. And another sector of the labor force that will eventually become worrisome and of concern, especially to government and NIB is the unemployed "middle age" The problem is that many businesses, including hotels and retail establishments are no longer interested in hiring this group. They go after the young, less costly and more trainable worker and hire them on contract, This too, is partly due to the changed labor laws where long term workers are entitle to costly benefits. So businesses trade the benefits of keeping long term workers and having to pay costly separation packages as to opposed to hiring the younger worker on contract and terminating them every two to three years and having to pay nothing to do so.

It means more roads got paved and more potholes got fixed than was done in five years. Maybe the British Royalty needs to visit more often. The ties have been cut from Britain for too long for younger folk to have any emotions about this visit. Some may say "why now after all this time." But back in the day, a Royal visit was big tings for Bahamians. Some got the day off or part of it to go sneak peek. Some just sneaked away for a few minutes. Then there was this lady on Wulff Road. She painted the trunks of the trees in front of her building and dressed up like Royalty. She called herself The Queen of Nassau. During one royal visit, she was seen been shoved roughly by police as she managed to get too close to the royal visitors. She meant no harm but protocols had to be established and maintained. And the school children were also let out early to wave British flags and poinciana branches, before independence.

But it’s perfectly OK for tourists not to wear masks in hotels and public areas? Even downtown Bay Street? You are a hypocrite! After two years Bahamians should be relaxing their mask wearing. Especially on family islands where there have been ZERO Covid cases over a number of weeks. At least outside and when they are not in close proximity to anyone else.

How many Bahamians are dying from heart failure/complications and how many of these individuals are vaccinated? They are no longer calling it a heart attack but ‘broken heart syndrome’. Because the symptoms of a normal heart attack are not present.