THE historic Bath Botanical Gardens in St Thomas is set to enjoy a $29.5 million refurbishing exercise aimed at diversifying tourism offerings in the eastern parish.

Managing director of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), Omar Sweeney, during the official contract-signing ceremony for the Gardens Rehabilitation Project on Thursday, noted that the project is in keeping with measures to diversify the country’s tourism offerings.

“A part of our resilience as a country, as well, is our economic resilience — that is, to ensure that the country’s development, in particular the country’s tourism offerings, don’t rely on one place, like on the north coast for example. [To ensure] that we are diversified, and we are able to have investments and attractions across the country,” said Sweeney.

Bath Botanical Gardens, which was designed to be a therapeutic space for visitors to the nearby Bath Mineral Spa, was established in 1779, the second-oldest such facility in the Western Hemisphere.

Chief technical director in the Ministry of Tourism David Dobson told the contract signing that the ministry’s community tourism policy, which has been approved as a Green Paper by the Cabinet, seeks to twin the botanical gardens with the Bath Hotel and Spa.

“It reflects what our thoughts were, that we want to change the way how community tourism operates and we want to form clusters — clusters of persons who complement each other and not people who compete against each other. So you have a cluster of persons so when tourists come to your community they can have a very rich experience, so the twinning of the botanical gardens and the spa is one of those,” Dobson said.

The refurbishing work is set to begin in a few days under the JSIF Second Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI-II).

“This is the second phase of the REDI project. The first project was from 2010 and ended around 2016-2017. This project is funded through a loan agreement between the Government of Jamaica and the World Bank. It targets agriculture and community tourism beneficiaries,” tourism specialist at JSIF Larisa McBean told the Jamaica Observer following the signing ceremony with contractors from SM Quality Construction Limited.

“Essentially, this project is being implemented by JSIF but in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture for the agriculture side, as well as its agencies such as RADA (Rural Agricultural Development Authority) and National Fisheries. Then [there is also] the Ministry of Tourism side — TPDCo (Tourism Product Development Company), JTB (Jamaica Tourist Board), etc,” added McBean.

In explaining the scope of the project, McBean said it is set to be completed by June, but an additional six-month period has been allocated to give beneficiaries time to report any defects to the contractor.

“The project includes the rehabilitation of the office, expanding it, rehabilitation of the restrooms — both male and female stalls to include disability access for both — as well as changing stations for babies in both restrooms. We will be rehabilitating the existing walkway, we will be building a shade house for 300 seedlings, there were two gazebos — one was damaged — we are going to rehabilitate that one and reconstruct the one that was destroyed to match the existing one. We are also going to do light work to clean and fix up the wishing well at the gardens,” added McBean.

In 2021 Agriculture Minister Floyd Green announced that the Government would be enhancing several public botanical gardens across the island in a bid to revive, resuscitate, and enhance the gardens.

Green, who argued that the enhancement of public gardens has to be a priority, shared that focus would be placed on Castleton Botanical Gardens in St Mary, Bath Botanical Gardens in St Thomas, and Cinchona Botanical Gardens in St Andrew.