Barrington Flemming<\/p>\n
Staff Reporter <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n One of Montego Bay\u2019s most popular beaches and night spots, the Aquasol Beach Park, was closed on Wednesday, sparking a legal battle between the Urban Development Corporation and the lessees of the facility, Carlyle Allen and Raymond Kerr.<\/strong><\/p>\n The UDC, in a statement, indicated that the temporary closure will facilitate the rehabilitation of the beach park, improvement of service delivery and bringing its recreational facilities on par with global standards of service.<\/p>\n The Corporation also said it was undertaking repair work to groynes along the Montego Bay waterfront to assist in the protection of the ecosystems and to prevent flooding along the central business district.<\/p>\n A lawsuit was filed in the St. James Parish Court on Thursday by the lessees\u2019 Attorney, Jennifer Messado, who argued that while the lease agreement between the UDC and messrs, Allen and Kerr for the operation of the Aquasol Beach Park ended in April this year, they were not formally served notice or given a timeline by the UDC to vacate and quit the premises. Allen has been operating the facility for the past ten years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are hoping that they will make a settlement that will allow us a chance to make a bid for the extension of the lease and at least an orderly exit if we don\u2019t get such a chance,\u201d Messado explained.<\/p>\n Messado said the situation is untenable as her clients cannot gain access to their resources at the facility and sub-tenants are also being made to suffer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe employee 57 persons and they are now out of jobs.\u00a0 They have families, how will they deal with that?\u00a0 So, we are waiting on the court to decide what\u2019s next.\u201d<\/p>\n CLOSE WATCH<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, former Mayor of Montego Bay, Senator Charles Sinclair has raised concerns with the temporary closure of the popular Aquasol Beach Park, expressing fear that the facility could be wrested from the public domain and placed into private hands, based on historical precedent.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I am going to be watching for is that when this refurbishing, renovation takes place that we do not hear that Aquasol is going to move from being a public facility, one that the public has access to, into private development where the public is going to be locked out,\u201d Sinclair explained. \u201cThat is something that I will not sit and watch because I think that St. James has lost all its beaches, places that locals or visitors could go to enjoy good beach facilities or so forth have been losing them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have lost Damali Beach, lost Cornwall Beach, we have very few public facilities to look forward to and I cannot sit and watch that happen to another of those facilities,\u201d the former mayor declared.<\/p>\n \u201cOur locals may have to jump off cliffs to access the sea. We are an island state so we love going to the beach and have proper facilities.\u00a0 It is a concern I have so I will be watching this one carefully as it moves forward,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barrington Flemming Staff Reporter \u00a0 One of Montego Bay\u2019s most popular beaches and night spots, the Aquasol Beach Park, was closed on Wednesday, sparking a legal battle between the Urban Development Corporation and the lessees of the facility, Carlyle Allen and Raymond Kerr. The UDC, in a statement, indicated that the temporary closure will facilitate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[91,92,93],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aquasol","tag-legal-battle","tag-summer"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":545,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions\/545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westernmirror.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}