A hearing into an application by Dart to relocate two beach access paths to make way for an extension of its West Bay Road tunnel was heard in open court for the first time on Friday.
Earlier hearings into the issue had been held “in chambers”, meaning members of the public and the press were not allowed to attend. Judge Margaret Ramsay-Hale lifted that restriction and Friday’s hearing was held in public.
At the hearing, Ramsay-Hale instructed counsel for the Dart-owned Cayman Shores Development Ltd., Michael Wingrave, to amend the originating summons before the court to include the Attorney General Chamber as a respondent, and urged that the matter be mediated and settled out of court.
On Friday, she gave a summary of an earlier hearing in which she had heard from concerned citizens who had put themselves forward as “interveners” in the case.
The Concerned Citizens Group, made up of private citizens including Ezmie Smith, Alice Mae Coe and Annie Multon, had become involved in the Grand Court action as interveners as there was no public entity at that time listed as a respondent to the application, and they wanted to bring the matter to the public’s attention, and to object to the removal the beach access sites.
Ramsay-Hale said she had wanted the interveners to have a voice in court because “they feel dispossessed and that they are not being heard”. She added that as those individuals spoke about the encroachment of development along West Bay Road and diminishing beach access rights across the island, their “distress was palpable”.
“I don’t think we can deal with people’s concerns by shutting them out and using legislation,” the judge said.
She noted that the concerns expressed by “well-respected members of the community” at that hearing were not limited to the Dart application, but were “widespread and wide-ranging, from East End to West Bay”.
At that previous hearing, Ramsay-Hale had instructed that, since there were no respondents to the originating summons from Dart’s legal counsel, and a case could not go ahead without respondents, the Registrar of Lands and the Public Lands Commission should be served with the summons.
Following a submission on Friday from Crown counsel Nigel Gayle, the judge ordered that the Attorney General, as the representative of the Crown which owns the public land that is subject to the proceedings, should be added to the respondents.
The interveners in the case from the Concerned Citizens Group, the members of which have been long-time campaigners for public beach access, were removed from formal involvement in the case going forward, as their interests and concerns would now be represented by the Attorney General, Ramsay-Hale said.
Coe told the court that she and her fellow citizens had “achieved what we set out to do”, by challenging the matter and bringing it to the attention of the relevant departments.
This case dates back to 2018, when the Central Planning Authority granted permission to Cayman Shores to extend the length of the underpass on West Bay Road by 170 feet, and approved the relocation and consolidation of two 6-foot-wide rights of way blocked when the tunnel was constructed.
In 2019, Dart applied to the Grand Court to relocate those public rights of way so the Land Registry could be updated. The company says it replaced the two paths with one 18-foot-wide right of way to the beach along the southern boundary of Royal Palms.
At Friday’s hearing, the judge acknowledged that there was “not an easy alliance” between Caymanians and Dart, and that people were, at different times, grateful or fearful about the developments done by the company.
Woody DaCosta, the new chairman on the Public Lands Commission, asked the court to be mindful that the commission already had a backlog of issues to deal, as it had not had a chairman for several months, but he said the commission had a role in the matter “as very interested parties”.
Ramsay-Hale gave Wingrave 14 days to amend the summons to include the Attorney General and to serve the document. She said she hoped there would be a mediated outcome in the case, rather than it having to go through litigated court proceedings.
In a statement issued after the hearing, Dart President of Real Estate Asset Management Justin Howe said, “The consolidated and enhanced public right of way is wider than most, providing an 18-foot access and facilitates emergency vehicle access, as was required last year when a boat was beached on the shore. Access to the beach by the community is important and we are confident that we can reach consent on achieving meaningful beach access.”
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The tunnel over West Bay Road between Galleria and Westshore Plazas is and always has been an eyesore that should not have been allowed.
There is nothing new about people owning land on both sides of a street. Nothing new or unreasonable about creating a footbridge between those parcels. Both the old Hyatt and the Ritz-Carlton did this.
What is about unacceptable is to build a concrete tunnel over the length of the properties that serves no safety purpose but is solely to create a financial gain for the property owner at the expense of the general public.