Signs of Life In Memorial Park
Darrell Bradley
There is sign of activity at the Memorial Park, finally. Belizeans probably remember the joyous ceremony well over a year ago when the newly upgraded, multi-million dollar upgraded park was launched. There were booths everywhere, high tech structures to house vendors aplenty. But that never happened. It still hasn’t happened, but like we said, there is sign of movement. Last week the Memorial Park Diner had a soft opening, and today the Mayor told News Five that’s only the start of a bright new era for the long neglected park.
Darrell Bradley, Belize City Mayor
“This is one of the things that we are moving on. Of course B.T.L. Park was our first main project together with CARILED, together with BELTRAIDE and the Small Business Development Center and that right now has twenty-eight successful businesses. And this is part of the water front and master plan development that we want to bring that development along to Memorial Park. So that Fuego’s right now…Mister Ian Lizarraga has opened since last Friday and he had a soft launch. We are going to coordinate with him in terms of a larger type activity. I toured the facility; they are employing twenty-eight people in that facility so again it is jobs. Most of the people are employed from Belize City—waitresses, cashiers, the manager—so that you have vibrancy coming back to the Memorial Park. Of course we want to ensure that we preserve the pristine atmosphere of the park; that it commemorates our veterans, but we also want to ensure that we are promoting economic development like the restaurant facility and we have other things in store within the next month. For example we are going to open several of the kiosks to the back. We have a hair-braiding association and a crafts person group that is made up of mainly women who are going to be occupying some of those booths. We also have Mister Sanker who is going to be doing a cultural themed presentation for cruise ship passengers from six in the morning to about two in the afternoon every day. He is going to charge cruise ship passengers ten dollars per person and the city is going to make a small amount off of that. So you are having good ideas coming out to the city and to Memorial Park and we expect that this park will be up and running similar in fashion to B.T.L. Park within, I would say, two months.”
The Memorial Park Diner opens officially on Wednesday.
