PORT-AU-PRINCE — Pétion-Ville’s mayor has signed a partnership contract with private company Lakay Fun World SA aimed at transforming the main square in Pétion-Ville, Place Saint-Pierre, into an attraction park.
The contract Mayor Kesner Normil signed will last 25 years and it states that the attraction park will have games and rides of international standards. Officials have yet to specify which rides will be in the park.
“This project is a donation of Lakay Fun World SA,” Normil told The Haitian Times. “I encourage citizens to do as much to contribute to the development of Pétion-Ville.”
Other members of Pétion-Ville’s council, Alexandra Roumain and Staco Amazan, oppose Normil’s decision to turn Place Saint-Pierre into an attraction park. The park was surrounded by metal sheets for when the developmental work will start, but the two councilmen said in an Apr. 27 interview with Cam Stefada Poulard they asked people to rip them off.
As of Apr. 27, several metal sheets were missing and a man is seen taking a nail off a metal sheet still guarding the park in a video shared on WhatsApp.
“The law does not grant municipalities any rights to transform, to rent or to sell partly or entirely any public places,” Roumain and Amazan said in an Apr. 25 note.
Pétion-Ville former Deputy Jerry Tardieu also criticized Normil’s decision in an open letter to Litz Quitel, the minister of Interior and Territorial Communities, on Apr. 25.
“The attempt to annihilate the square is an attack against the inalienable right of the population,” Tardieu said.
Place Saint-Pierre was built by former President Jean-Pierre Boyer between 1820 and 1843 in honor of Alexandre Petion, Boyer’s predecessor, according to the Institute for the Protection of National Heritage (ISPAN). The park last went under renovation in 2012.
I have some private land in Brache and Mellier,on the way to Leogane that Id’ like to offer for the project