Living in Grand Cayman

For the last two years or so, a new and very large building have been taking shape on one of the last large vacant lots in the business district of George Town.

Here is what the land looked like before the project started (picture taken sometime in 2007)

Here is what it looks like today. Once completed sometime in 2011, this will be the largest building in the Cayman Islands with +-150,000 sq.ft of office space. It will serve as the main  government building.

Once completed, the new government building will consolidate many of the ministries/departments into this single building on Elgin Ave.  Right now, many of  government agencies are scattered around town.

The cool thing I find about this building is that it will be LEED certified, which means it will meet certain environmental benchmarks.  For one, it will use geothermal technology for the air conditioning system. I saw them doing the holes in the ground and they seemed to go very deep!  Also, I believe that on the roof there is a rain catchment system which will then serve for the toilets and other such uses.

Of course, this building is built to resist the nastiest hurricanes.  The walls are made of poured concrete and the windows are all hurricane resistant windows.  Also, when they started to build it, they put a massive amount of fill so to make the building significantly higher than road level (see the 3rd picture, you can see the stairs/slope)  During hurricane Ivan in 2004, this area of town had lots of water (so I am told …) and this building is probably 10ft above street level by my estimates.

In any case, it wont be put to use this year for hurricanes.  Season ends in 2-weeks and nothing on the radar.  Some disturbance near Columbia, but not forecasted to come to Cayman.  Enjoy the long week-end everyone (everyone in Cayman that is) 🙂

Diving and most aquatic activities were pretty much out of the question on the western part of the island this week-end.  The western part is essentially George Town and Seven Mile beach. I saw today some of the largest waves I have ever seen here.  In any case, they are the biggest since the close call of Hurricane Dean that I have seen.

I am just guessing, but probably the passing a few hundred miles away of Hurricane Tomas may have something to do with it.

Here is the wave action at Eden rock.  Those stairs are where you go into the water to snorkel.  None of that happening right now.  The water is all milky anyway.

Here is the main commercial area in George Town, right in front of the stores and restaurants.  These waves were putting water in the street with and made quite a “thud” on impact.

The port dock where all the containers are usually located got quite a beating also.  It was quite a show.

Lastly, the chicken! 🙂  A subject I like to discuss once in a while.  I still find it funny that they roam freely all over the place.  They don’t seem to bother anyone and just “do their thing” of roaming around town.  I had always noticed upon arriving to work in the early morning that the roosters made quite a symphony.   Basically, when I get to the 3rd floor of where I work ( I use an outside staircase), I can always hear what seems like hundreds of roosters from near and afar. It always impressed me … not sure why though.  Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here they are: the morning George Town chicken symphony. Listen carefully, there are a significant number of them that you can hear on the video.  And consider this, what other blog would ever present to you such a random thing.  LOL