The Amandala

Dear Editor:

It seems PG Town has decided to renovate both the front street market and the main street community center and park all one time, leaving the many vendors scurrying to find any space available. The result is chaos and ever more crowding. I know this situation is supposed to be temporary but are the existing plans innovative enough to serve us for the long run?

A leading businesswoman and I were discussing the situation—when I suggested splitting the market, putting part of it in the public works compound out near Indianville. She said, “Oh no, Tina, the whole market should be on the airstrip!”

Suddenly I could envision it and the idea certainly made sense—the existing airstrip site would allow for future market expansion, less crowding in the downtown areas, and better sanitation for the public toilets (which now drain into the sea) and it would make for much more convenient shopping with all vendors being in one central area.

The market was placed alongside the sea at a time when many traveled by water and was appropriate to that era but now almost all travel is by road, often in large trucks and buses. Those large vehicles require wider and sturdier roads than our town streets need to be and thus ought to be kept out of the downtown and residential areas and routed to a centralized area for loading and unloading.

For the same reasons it would also make sense to put the bus station in the new market area, instead of downtown where it presently is.

The airstrip has been a hazard for many years with the residential area on one side and the college on the other—and now the town has expanded well beyond it in every direction. If memory serves me, a plan for moving the airstrip was in place some twenty and or so years ago, getting as far as finding a site and having the strip graded. Today we have temporary airstrip buildings because they were meant to be moved to the new site.

I suggest we seriously consider a plan to move the airstrip out of town and build the new market on the existing airstrip site and I hope the town leadership can be adaptable enough to see the sense of it. Certainly PG needs to use its resources wisely and in farsighted ways.

It is time for PG to make the step from small town to BIG TOWN status. Are you up to it, Town Leaders?

With respect,

Christina Salisbury