Dart and CIG to partner on road to town
Stretch of highway to be widened by Dart
(CNS): The Dart Group will be partnering with government on widening the stretch of the Esterley Tibbetts Highway from Camana Bay to George Town and creating a new roundabout to link that highway with the new airport connector. Delivering his speech to support the Strategic Policy Statement in the LA Wednesday, Premier Alden McLaughlin said that, as negotiations on the National Roads Authority (NRA) deal near completion, the developer has agreed to build an additional two lanes of roadway from the Century 21 Roundabout to the Butterfield Roundabout near AL Thompson’s and a new roundabout near to Lakeside apartments.
While, the premier revealed no other details of the re-negotiations over the controversial deal signed by the UDP administration and declared unlawful by the auditor general, he confirmed that Dart was now talking with the NRA about the start of the work.
“As part of the deal, which was negotiated as part of the third amendment to the NRA Agreement, Dart has also agreed to extend the Esterley Tibbetts Highway and make more improvements to our road infrastructure,” McLaughlin told his political colleagues.”Dart will build an additional two lanes of roadway from the Century 21 Roundabout to the Butterfield Roundabout near AL Thompson’s. This will include a new roundabout in the vicinity of the Lakeside Apartments on Esterley Tibbetts Highway, which will ultimately accommodate the Airport Connector Road. While Dart will fund the roadworks between the Century 21 Roundabout to and including the roundabout near Lakeside, government has agreed to fund the extension south of the new roundabout to the Butterfield Roundabout. Dart and the National Roads Authority are currently working out the details of these much-needed road improvements.”
The premier said that the deal regarding Dragon Bay, which he announced earlier this year at the Chamber Legislative Lunch, was completed and government had negotiated a fair market value for the freehold of the crown land.
“Dart currently holds the leasehold of this property under a 99-year lease, which has a balance of about 75 years to run. I’m pleased to announce today negotiations have been successfully concluded, and once the matter is finalised in accordance with the requirements of the Governor (Vesting of Lands) Law, the details of the sale will be brought to this House for final approval,” he said.
The valuations were between $12 million and $16 million but the Department of Lands and Survey successfully negotiated for a price of US$14.57 million for the sale of the freehold of the property.
“Dart has committed to developing the property and government will make revenue from property sales and development as a result,” he said.
Check back later to CNS for more from the SPS and government’s now entrenched position over the cruise port.
Category: Government Finance, Politics
I honestly don’t care what they do!
This island has already gone to the DOGS!
Young Educated caymanians can’t even get jobs!
Goodbye My little Cayman!
McKeeva out…….Alden in.
God in action.
The first basic rule of Traffic Engineering is:-
“The capacity of a road is governed by it’s junctions”
In other words simply duelling a road will not solve problems such as queuing at Camana Bay roundabout unless a junction design is Engineered to provide for the traffic flows and movements involved
Too many road widening schemes are being considered without looking at the causes of traffic build-up. In many cases improvements to the junctions alone would solve the issue
If some of the drivers on the island learned the “basic rules” of driving, this would help alleviate traffic flow.
I don’t know how many times I have sat waiting to pull out from a junction at a roundabout thinking a vehicle is coming past me, only for it to take a different route.
There are roads that need improving, but a damn sight more drivers need to learn how to drive properly.
At least Dart gets it done. First class, in budget and on time. Show me a Government project that can say that.
I don’t get why the airport connector road is needed?!?! How embarrassing will it be for our tourists being driven down the road where goats are tied up amongst all kind of abandoned vehicles and rusted machinery and dilapidated houses.
I am already afraid of the idiots who are going to use the two lanes to weave in and out of traffic etc. so more accidents are going to be on the horizon. People traveling in the evening traffic hours from West to East are going to be bottlenecking again at the CNB roundabout which will carry on all the way to the GH roundabout.
Poster 1:05 have you ever been outside of Cayman? Less than a mile from MIA, JFK, Newark, and most other countries report back here on this site the areas that you find there. Caymanians need to put away this ignorance and realise long gone are the days when we were able to compare ourselves to Monaco. Greed and shortsightedness have left a great many feeling the pinch and scraping the bottom. So you go on being proud because pride commeth before fall saith the good book and not only here in Cayman but it seems as the entire world is in chaos.
I have no idea what you just said, but clearly a lot of rambling ….
What about the rest of the roads like out towards East of the Island??? Soon we wont be able to dive anywhere the roads will be so blocked with more cars!!
Contribute to the economy as a district and then you can moan.
Dart doesn’t own land there. Sell him some and he’ll build you a nice shiny road.
Did the PPM confirm if the $12 mill to $16 mill evaluations were USD or KYD??? We see that the sale price is listed in USD….
“The valuations were between $12 million and $16 million but the Department of Lands and Survey successfully negotiated for a price of US$14.57 million for the sale of the freehold of the property.”
This road should not be changed. I have travelled this road like so many others have, every morning. I like to drive it and see the egrets at the side of the road wading in toxic filth. The small dog packs who look for another discarded kebab container.
The soft breezes rolling over mount trash more before I quickly get my windows up.
No person should come here and take away our history and heritage.
Guess whos on top in this partnership. from the time the Caynanian Protection Board changed its title we been getting it with no protection.
“the premier revealed no other details of the re-negotiations ” Phew.. for a while there I thought the PPM was going to be open and transparent and take back economic control of our country from Dart. I was worried they might act in the best interest of the people in an open manner but I am glad to see that they have watched the UDP re-runs and realize that life is better, for them, when they continue the sell out to Dart and keep the ignorant populace that elected them in the dark.
No tax cuts for the working folks only for the rich developers in the form of concessions. while they build beautiful developments which we help fund with concessions, our infrastructure goes down hill because we are broke. We can not afford the police or schools we need. Wwe deny healthcare to our people, well the poor ones the rich gets what they need and more.
If they, Dart et.al, like the rest of us were to pay their fair share, we would have a country that money would be begging to come to and be a part of without concessions. Currently the way things are going we will be a slum island with beautiful developments only the rich can afford to use and it will have been built with dollars that were rightfully ours, by developers who took advantage of us because our elected officials, of both UDP and PPM, played right into their hands,and sold out Cayman to the richest bidder.
If Mac’s government had done this deal there would have been all sorts of investigations and allegations of corruption. Talk about under the table deals.
Aaah but if this had been McKeeva’s doing all kinds of evil would be cried out by Alden and his chipmunks! So much hypocrisy!
I love this post
The whole concession thing is a false economy created by rich developers and politicians. One recent concession was for a new development just south of GT and one of the partners in the project that received the concessions is still owing the CIG somewhere in the 6 mil dollar range for an earlier project of his.
Can some one please tell me how that makes sense?
Based on some pretty well documented (alleged) past behavior, I’m pretty sure if you asked certain people mentioned to “pay their fair share” they wouldn’t be here.
What done is done! No use complaning we must live with it now, it could be worst. Thanks to Dart we can still have some development and jobs. No need to keep hating Dart so many in the financial industry made billions contributed little or nothing and when they pulled up roots and left Caymanians were left with very little to show in return.
They still had their country!
No point building two lanes people don’t know how to use them
Correct. Even one lane is tough.
It’s a road to Town alright, but which Town?
Dartville.
Dart has come to save us!! Dart is here to save the day!! We should build the dock for him if nothing else, to show our thanks. And follow through with promised made to him under the table…
By my reckoning once this is done Dart will have built or improved over 70% of the length of the bypass. Shouldn’t it be renamed the Kenneth Dart Highway?
Does anyone know just how much of the landmass of Grand Cayman the Dart Corporation now owns?
Only as much as we have been willing to sell him.
“WE” didn’t sell him anything. The 4^$^%&n government did!
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-09/billionaire-dart-reinvents-himself-as-cayman-islands-land-baron
Ha! You would have a long time uncovering all that and if you did, we would all be shocked. It’s buried under different company names, not all under his name. When the lovely ladies in WB were trying to fight for us, there was a map showing shaded areas which land masses they were aware of but that was removed.
This should be made public. Or just bury our heads in the Dart sand from another country (reference being made here about the different colored foreign sand he brought in for his beach down the road).
And the more you sell him the better off Cayman Islands are. Thanks for pointing that out.
Dragon bay properties values will rise heavily with easy access from / to Georgetown airport etc. while property values going towards Savannah ext. decline further…yes he is an evil genius. And did you notice that the utilities on his property is buried while they added even more ugly poles going to it…think that is a coincidence. I like what Dart has been doing but its not totally out of the goodness of his heart. its more like Dart is using the fact that the CIG is not capable of doing these projects to his advantage.
12.18, you muppet. Name a business that does something from the goodness of its heart.
9:17 learn to read with comprehension…you must be one of the bible thumpers taking words out of context. I will spell it out for you…Dart is taking advantage of the failures of the CI Government to make his properties etc. have higher value than the rest of the CI Peoples and investors. Its a form of manipulation and could / will cause hardships for the average hard working Caymanian.
Provided there a gate in and out then I will be at the front of the queue for that development.
Great News for the residents of Dumpside!
Good news indeed.
Could it possibly be that Mr Dart really lowes us?
The PPM claimed a similar proposal by the UDP was wrong! They claimed it was selling out the country and full of the self interests and corruption. So how is this now a good idea and not selling out the country or wrong for them to do exactly what they fought against?
You haven’t seen nothing yet! wait until you hear the announcement of the new Waste management Facility to be built on the same Dart’s property in Breakers.
PPM got this all planned out, they are timely introducing the method of recycling and will finally negotiate with Dart to build a complete facility which will be able to recycle our waste.
Dart will then take ownership of the dump and premeditate it…. then we will all live in a clean environment.
McKeeva was a Saint compared to Alden. At least he stood up to the UK on behalf of Caymanians. The word XXXX should never come out of Alden’s mouth, and don’t mention transparency. Alden doesn’t know what that word mean.
Put down the crack pipe and relax, bobo.
Wow, this sounds worse than some of the UDP deals. They get about 270 acres of land in the 7 mile beach area for US$15 million. That works out to around $55,000.00 per acre.That’s some cheap land. If you can get land that cheap which would be less than $15,000.00 per house lot maybe the government should have used that land for lost cost housing.
This is not “cheap land”. This land is not free and clear. Dart has it leased and the lease still has 75 years to run. They are now buying the freehold. So you can’t calculate the value as though the land was not encumbered by a long lease.
Dart already holds/bought the leasehold (with 75 years remaining) for many millions. The $15 million is just the payment to convert from leasehold to freehold.
He didn’t buy the leasehold from government for many millions. Government originally did a lease for around two million. Close to three humdred acres of land on west bay road for less than 20 million. Compare that for the 300 acres that he bought for where Camana Bay is now from Dr. Brown. Ultimately government got less than $20 million for 300 acres of land. That is cheap!!!
But the existing road is surely of deep deep cultural significance. If not it must be historic at least. A petition, a march, a failed law suit. Hurrah!
In a land where a shed is “historic” there may be point there.
why would you want projects completed on time an on budget, goes against our history as a people
in dart we trust…it’s build or bust….
More hypocrisy from Alden and the Regressives
Evil. Pure evil. Doing good things like that. How low will they stoop next?
Paving the pathway that leads to the legalization of gay marriage.
The evil part will come out later.
As usual when it’s too late to do anything about it.
In dart I trust…..
Dart owns all left nuts, he doesn’t own the right ones yet as some don’t have any.