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The following is a transcript of a speech given by David Wingate, at the B.E.S.T public meeting held at West Pembroke Primary School, on 22 March 2007.

Given the controversy surrounding the Southlands hotel proposal at present, a small group from the Bermuda National Trust, including myself, requested and was very kindly given a personal tour of the Southlands property by Mr. Chris Christenson, who is one of the entrepreneurs and who presently lives in the beautiful old Morgan House which he has been proudly restoring. Nestled against the hillside within a rural valley it has a commanding view of the sea and behind, on the hillside, we were given a tour of the old quarry gardens with their intricate maze of connecting paths that in some instances connect between the quarries with tunnels. The whole setting was magic, the very essence of the Bermuda image that we have traditionally projected for our tourist visitors. We all agreed, too, how wonderful if all this could become more accessible for both visitors and locals.

No small wonder then that the property would seem so desirable for a hotel group of the seven star reputation of Jumeirah. Who could possibly argue against a chance to revitalize the tourist industry with such an upscale hotel? Is it not much better to cater to fewer high-spending tourists than flooding this already overcrowded island with masses of low-spending cruise ship visitors? Hardly surprising, too, that some within Government would want to rush this through with an SDO rather than risk losing the opportunity by subjecting it to the long delays of our cumbersome planning application process!

On the surface, all of these points seemed perfectly reasonable until I took the time to study the planning application in detail within the context of Bermuda’s present over-stretched infrastructure and limited land resources. Only then did I conclude that in reality it is more like a Peter Woolcock cartoon caricature of the worst development proposal that we could possibly inflict on Bermuda!

I say this advisedly, because if approved by an SDO as presently submitted, it will not only override nearly every environmental safeguard within the present (and already long outdated) Development Plan, setting a dangerous precedent which will completely undermine what little faith the public still has in it, but it will do so on a truly massive scale.

If we look at the aerial photo of Southlands and its surroundings, we can see that it is one of the largest remaining open spaces on Bermuda (at 37 acres) and that most of it is forested. It contrasts sharply with the high-density suburbia surrounding it, which is closer to the norm on Bermuda today.

Size is the single most important factor determining open space values in that one large open space has vastly more open space values than a similar area made up of small separate parcels of open space. Because the greater part of Bermuda is already highly fragmented by subdivision into small lots, their collective open space value is much smaller, even though their collective area is much larger. Given the shortage of open space generally, therefore, retaining the integrity of our remaining large open spaces is of paramount importance. Only a large open space, for example, can provide the opportunity for another 18 hole golf course, and we are already down to our last option (the Morgan’s Point former U.S. Naval Annex lands) - even Southlands can’t provide that.

This principle of trying to retain the integrity of our larger open spaces has generally been recognized in all of our Development Plans, as reflected in the conservation zonings of those plans, although it has been steadily compromised with each new Development Plan in the absence of any compensatory mechanism for conservation zonings.

Thus we can see by the zoning map of Southlands that a serious attempt to retain its open space value has been made by fairly extensive woodland reserve zoning; arable land zoning and a Section 34 Agreement which was imposed on one part of the estate as a compromise in approving a previous development application by the Willowbank Foundation (the previous owners) that was never realized.

Now, if we superimpose the hotel development application currently submitted for an SDO, we can see that not only would the Section 34 be rescinded, but the Woodland Reserve zoning would be negated by the intrusion of no less than 15 multi-storey condominium blocks and hotel buildings, fragmenting it into tiny parcels. Given the scale of clearing and excavation for building construction, the damage would extend well beyond the building footprints and little more than hedgerows or specimen trees would remain and these would mostly die back to a new equilibrium due to root damage and increased exposure to wind.

It bears pointing out here what effect this loss of woodland has on other wildlife, in particular our native bird life. We generally fail to appreciate these niceties because our ecological footprint lies largely outside of Bermuda where most of our food, fiber and manufactured goods are produced for import, but our woodland birds have to live off Bermuda’s land and even our tiny white-eyed vireo or “chick of the village,” as we call it, requires about 1 -2 acres of vegetated land per pair to survive which they defend against other vireos as their private property. Likewise the average bluebird pair requires 2 – 3 acres of mainly open lawn covered land to survive, but where human housing densities rise above two houses per acre they are generally displaced by urban birds like house sparrows which are able to benefit by the “trickle down principle” from the food scraps from our foreign ecological footprint. As the mean human housing density is already about two per acre, this means that we are coming dangerously close to losing our bluebird and the total surviving population of our native land birds is already very small compared to our own.

Suffice it to say that the small, remote oceanic island of Bermuda has already attained the status of a city without a country and even New York City’s Central Park is much larger than the largest parkland or nature reserve on Bermuda. There is hardly any land left to spare for other wildlife and our natural heritage is under dire threat. We can already forget any idea of competing on the open tourist market in the area of terrestrial ecotourism!

But here is the punch line and the ultimate irony: the Southlands application as proposed would result in a development density even greater than the average for Bermuda. If it was the open space values of Southlands which attracted this hotel proposal in the first place what on earth sense does it make to obliterate those values almost completely in the process of building it! I should also mention here that much the same thing was done at the Daniel’s Head ecotourism resort, know known as Nine Beaches, where the entire seven acres available had to be saturated with eco-tents in order to achieve the supposed “economies of scale” - and Daniel’s Head was formerly perceived by the Bermuda public as parkland in comparison to urban Somerset!

It is unthinkable, therefore, that we should allow the fragmentation and urbanization of yet another virgin green space for a hotel, while at least four other hotel sites lie derelict as brownfield sites. Surely we must first solve the underlying reasons why those hotels have failed and then they should be the first to be selected for re-development. Otherwise they remain a blot on the landscape prone to take over by squatters as is currently happening on the Club Med site.

What are the reasons why they have failed? These have most to do with runaway development of the kind now proposed at Southlands which is completely overwhelming the local labour resources and the service infrastructure of Bermuda. Examples of overwhelmed service infrastructure abound, not least the inability of the under-staffed Planning Department to deal in a timely manner with even the smallest development application (perhaps this is the real reason why government feels compelled to by-pass its own planning process with SDOs!). Other examples are the housing crisis, the public schools crisis, the drugs crisis and the traffic crisis, but I would like to focus only on the latter because I believe it to be the most intractable.

What we have on Bermuda are three main longitudinal roads hedged in on both sides by innumerable private properties. They have already been straightened and widened as much as possible and it would be unthinkably damaging and costly to add additional lanes to accommodate the increasing traffic. Thus we have the equivalent of hardening of the arteries, with more and more side roads from new developments feeding into them and increasing the traffic pressure. The equivalent of a heart attack comes when a major accident causes a blockage and this is happening more and more frequently, strangling the economy. I have come to regard this as the ultimate limiting factor to future development because I can see no way that the public will be persuaded to accept additional traffic lanes or conversion of the Railway Trail from a park back to a commuter route. But with no less than four other SDOs for major new developments along the South Shore in addition to all the other on-going developments that would surely become a necessity if we opt to approve them all. Is this the kind of future for Bermuda we want? This is just one example of the major issues which have to be addressed in achieving sustainable development.

I would like to wrap up by taking a closer look at what I regard as the worst and least viable aspect of the Southlands proposal – the Phase 1 beachfront hotel.
First, this requires moving the public road inland to make enough space and one aspect of that is putting the road underground for approximately a quarter of the length of the property. That is a brilliant idea for connecting the inland and shoreward parts of the property for guests and for hiding the through traffic, but it is symbolically burying the concerns of the rest of the community.

Far worse is the beachfront hotel itself. In order to assess the engineering risks of building it on a soft rock, eroding clifftop, the applicants commissioned an engineering report. Not surprisingly that report advised that erosion of the natural cliff in hurricane events would continue and that the best way to prevent it would be to face the cliff with a storm-resistant concrete wall. But incredibly they then went on to advise that this would then preclude the need for a coastal setback so the applicants should apply to combine this structure into the seaward walls of the hotel itself! In other words the design submitted is for the front wall of the hotel to be flush with the present cliff face. Not only that, it is proposed to cut the land down to the 20’ level so that the stepped multi-stories are set into the hillside. This would be a massive quarrying operation fronted by a concrete seawall extending almost the entire length of the property and putting the lower stories within the storm surge/wave run up zone in a major hurricane. While a massively reinforced seawall might conceivably be designed to resist erosion damage it would not prevent extensive flooding and extraneous damage to the hotel itself in a hurricane as happened to the Wyndham Hotel in Fabian.

How many of you can remember when the photograph of the Natural Arches in Tucker’s Town was the icon of tourist promotional ads featuring Bermuda beaches? It is symbolic, I think, that the arch was damaged by hurricane Felix in 1995, and enough concern was expressed then to try and repair it structurally in an aesthetically sensitive way. But then hurricane Felix obliterated it completely along with the headland it supported, which only underscored the fact that the beauty of our coastline is the result of a natural erosion process. Have we now dispensed with aesthetics altogether? The new tourist promotional icon, evidently, is about to become a concrete seawall.

Finally, I was very surprised that the engineering consultants report made no mention of the prediction of sea level rise with global warming, a prediction which is continually being updated in the direction of the worst case scenario by the International Panel on Climate Change. The latest predictions are for at least a half-meter rise within the next fifty years or within the life expectancy for a new hotel.

In a paper I presented at the United Kingdom Overseas Territories Conservation Forum Conference in Bermuda in 2003, I considered the effects this would have on those ephemeral beaches that characterize much of the primarily erosion South Shore coastline. Many of these beaches wash away temporarily whenever we have a storm event and Southlands beach is one of these. It is entirely predictable that a half meter rise of sea level would change the shoreline of Southlands from a situation where the beach disappears occasionally to something more like the Alfred Blackburn Smith nature reserve west of Coral Beach, where it only forms on rare occasions. Beaches are the primary focus of tourist promotional ads by Madison Avenue. It would be unthinkable for a Jumeirah hotel to accept the loss of their beach, hence we would have to expect emergency applications for beach replacement, or even worse, for sand grabber breakwaters with all the costs and damage to the marine environment that that would entail. Southlands, therefore, is not the most ideal location for a beach resort.

In closing I would like to say how extremely encouraged I am by the now almost universal recognition of the value of retaining open space. This growing appreciation was manifested by the battle over the Botanical Gardens. If our economics advisors could figure out a way of putting a dollar value on all the free services of nature that open spaces provide I feel sure that they would already be valued higher than most of our failing hotels. We must strive, therefore, for maximum efficiency of land use, and that means keeping and enhancing our best remaining open spaces as parks and reserves, woodland and farmland, while gradually re-developing our built heritage into a more efficient form. In this regard I would like to recommend a book on this hot topic entitled “The Restoration Economy” by Storm Cunningham. You will even find the Nonsuch “Living Museum” Project featured in it.

I have a dream. I would like to think that we could purchase Southlands as a community-wide “Buy Back Bermuda” project and that Government could then provide every inducement to encourage the current owners to invest in the restoration of one of the brownfield hotel sites instead. I am sure that they would then find that much of the present public opposition would turn to public support.

Posted on March 29th, 2007 under , • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback