Green told this newspaper recently that he had prepared letters to dispatch to citizens at home and in the diaspora seeking their assistance, a plan that Director of Culture Professor James Rose had dismissed as impractical.
According to the director, that kind of civic-mindedness no longer existed and it would be better to seek the money from funding agencies.
“Our best bet would be to get a restoration plan, work out costing and a realistic schedule and go to the funding agencies. We are prepared to side with them but they’ve got to get the documentation right,” Dr Rose stated in a subsequent interview.
Speaking with Stabroek News yesterday, the mayor said that in hindsight he “absolutely agreed” with Dr Rose’s recommendation.
“We have a situation where things that ought not to be contentious have become contentious. The government has shown its hostility towards City Hall and that’s not useful. They should forget their resistance and work to restore a national treasure,” Green said.
The mayor said he had tried contacting Dr Rose on the proposal but learnt that he was overseas and would do so again upon his return. He added that he will go ahead with his plan to send out the letters saying that “it does no harm.”
He told this newspaper previously that he had held off dispatching them because of the present environment of “confusion” at City Hall. According to him, he is awaiting “the right time” to launch his appeal.
“I’m waiting for a less stressful period because I’ve asked them to give me an estimate [and] it’s going to cost a lot of money. It’s something like over $400 million.”
The mayor said he is looking to have the entire complex restored which is a very technical process and requires an expert with the architectural experience used to construct the facility.
In 1977, Guyana acceded to the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage that was adopted by UNESCO in 1972, a treaty which addresses the conservation and protection of natural and cultural heritage sites of the world. From the mid-1990s Guyana made three nominations for World Heritage Site status, namely the Kaieteur National Park, Shell Beach and Historic Georgetown. However, none of those submissions have been successful to date.
A ‘Tentative List’ indicating an intention to nominate Historic Georgetown was submitted to UNESCO in December 2004 and a small committee, which has not been functioning, was formed to complete the nomination dossier and the management plan for the site. That list includes City Hall. Two Dutch experts, including Dr Ron van Oers, who also worked with Suriname in preparing the country’s successful nomination, assisted in preparing Guyana’s dossiers.
And in April 2005, two Dutch experts in conservation spent two weeks in Georgetown supervising architecture staff and students of the University of Guyana in a historic building survey of the selected area. This is part of the data collection for the nomination dossier.
