A team from the KSAC, including Deputy Mayor Lee Clarke and Town Clerk Errol Greene, tour a commercial building in Cross Roads which has been ordered by the courts to be demolished. The building, which houses hairdressing and barber salons, restaurants, dressmaking and tailor shops and retail shops, has several breaches of the Building and Town & Country Planning Acts. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

At least two buildings slapped with stop orders for breaches in the capital, Kingston, have remained idle for years, unable to proceed, while the Spanish-owned Riu Mahoe Bay hotel near Montego Bay is seeking to continue construction without demolishing its illegal fourth floor on three buildings.

Highly placed sources said the hotel was negotiating with the Government to keep the fourth floors, despite stop orders slapped on the construction by the St James Parish Council on instructions from Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

"It just goes to show what foreigners can get away with, against what locals can get away with," the source said.
RIU built the illegal fourth floors on the basis of a construction plan that had not been seen or approved by the St James Parish Council, and against the ruling by several state agencies that it should not build any higher than three floors, because the hotel was in the direct flight path to the Sangster International Airport.

The Observer source said RIU had made only minor adjustments to the buildings since the stop order but had submitted, or was about to submit, a request for permission to keep the fourth floors.

The source, who asked not to be named, suggested caution on the part of the Government, noting that letting Riu off the hook could embolden others who were breaching the Building and Town Planning regulations across the island.

Faced with an increasing number of these building breaches in the Corporate Area, the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) said it would now seek to have stop orders issued through the courts.

In doing so, the Corporation hoped its enforcement documents would carry more weight and drive down the high rate of non-compliance with the Building and Town and Country Planning Act.

Between January 2007 and April this year, the KSAC issued 96 cease work notices and several stop orders. However, some of the proprietors have continued to build in spite of the local authority's warnings.

"We will be meeting with the attorney-general to get the Cease Work Notice and the Stop Notice upgraded to documents of the court so that when they ignore them, they will be in contempt of court," Deputy Mayor Lee Clarke told the Observer.

At present, the documents are issued by the Corporation in its capacity as the local planning authority. However, many of the breaches now on its books, which number between 160 and 175 based on Observer calculations, are long-standing offences, at least one of which dates back some 20 years.

"Most of them are with our lawyer and are now being prepared for court action," said Clarke, who also chairs the Building and Town Planning Committee.

One of the examples of long-standing offences is Auburn Court at 15 South Avenue, St Andrew, which is owned by Dilbert Perrier. In 1995, Perrier added on a recreational area to the apartment complex without a permit from the KSAC.

The Corporation later served him an enforcement notice under section 23 of the Planning Act, prohibiting him from carrying out further development and requiring him to restore the land to its condition before the addition took place.

The authority also served a notice of irregularity, under section 38 of the Building Act, ordering that the building be torn down.

Perrier appealed the KSAC decision, but in 2002 the courts ruled against him. The matter is now before the Privy Council and the building in question is still standing.

Another well-known case, also owned by Perrier, is the abandoned building across from the Insurance Company of the West Indies on St Lucia Avenue in New Kingston.

A source close to the case said that the KSAC served enforcement notices on the building in the 1980s when it realised there was an extra floor and ordered that it be demolished. Perrier, however, never complied. Nor did he ever move in and today, the structure has become a haven for vagrants.

The glaring examples include an untidy building at the corner of Old Hope and Caledonia roads in Cross Roads, St Andrew. It houses several businesses ranging from restaurants, hairdressing and barber salons, wholesale and retail shops, dressmaking and tailoring establishments, bars and rooms for rent.

A section of the building extends across a gully, another piece encloses some utility wires and despite several enforcement notices served on it, the owner, Michael Dibbs, has allegedly not sought to regularise the premises.
The courts recently granted the KSAC an interim injunction and ordered that the building be demolished but the final decision has not yet been handed down.

Still, Dibbs could buy himself time through the appeals process.

Other offenders of the Building Act abound in the areas of Half-Way-Tree, New Kingston and their environs. Specific areas are Dumbarton Avenue, off Molynes Road; Caribbean Close in Trafalgar Park; and Sullivan Avenue, in the Kingston 8 area, where persons started construction work and/or changed the use of their properties from residential to commercial, without the KSAC's knowledge and approval.

Part of the problem for the increase, said city engineer Norman Shand, was the shortage of building officers. Ideally, there should be 12, but there are currently only six at the KSAC.

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