By Francis Quamina Farrier
THERE was a quiet “Hurray!” around Georgetown and beyond by citizens last week, when it was announced that restoration works on the structurally deteriorating City Hall building will commence soon. The statement informed citizens that the restoration works will be completed in March 2023. There has been an indignant out-cry by many citizens over the decades, as the building slowly deteriorated, and fears that it might collapse, causing injury and even death to those working in it, or going there to pay their rates and taxes. A few years ago, Fire Chief Marlon Gentle had classified the building as a fire hazard.

The announcement of complete repairs to City Hall has been decades in coming, and many citizens thought that their beautiful City Hall building would one day collapse and be gone forever, and probably replaced with a rectangular concrete monstrosity.

On October 1, 2017, my article with the headline, “Is the iconic Georgetown City Hall destined to disappear?” was published right here in the Sunday Chronicle Pepperpot Magazine. The article made a case for urgent repairs to the building. Though happy at the recent news, the citizens of Georgetown are not ready to exhale just yet. They want to see the actual commencement of works. The sight of the workers with tools in hand and working diligently and carefully on the repairs will certainly bring a sense of hope to the citizens of Georgetown and others who love that castle-like building dearly. That iconic, gothic wooden building would have totally collapsed years ago due to lack of maintenance, had it not been for the obvious high quality of the materials used in its construction, and of course, the high standard of the construction itself. After decades of lack of maintenance, portions of the building have already fallen off over the years.

The City Hall building was designed by the Rev. Fr. Ignatius Scoles, SJ, a Catholic priest, in 1887. Construction of his masterful design was completed in 1889, at the cost of $54,826.62. The restoration cost will be $780 Million,which was supplied by local and central government and the European Union.

Apart from my 2017 article, many citizens have been pleading to at least three mayors to have the job done, since the building looked as though it would have collapsed at any time. In fact, the concert hall on the middle floor was closed and no longer considered safe for use. In more recent years, the building was declared a fire hazard by the Fire Department. An order was given by then Fire Chief Marlon Gentle that there should be no mass gatherings within the building. However, statutory council meetings continue to be held in the Council Chamber.  It must be noted that there were some minor repairs carried out in 2012 when the central government made a grant of $20 million. Of course, that was just a drop in the bucket and nowhere near the hundreds of millions needed to effect complete repairs to the building.

Now that the good news has been announced, citizens will be looking to see when the restoration works will actually commence. They are all waiting to exhale.