On Wednesday, the five finalists in the competition to design the new Straw Market will be publicly displayed at the British Colonial Hilton.
Construction of the new facility, with a price tag of $3.5 million, is expected to begin June 1.
The original market burned down on Sept. 4, 2001, leaving more than 500 vendors and businesses without a way of making a living. A temporary site was created for the vendors, until a permanent home was built.
After several schemes to relocate the vendors at the old Customs Building near Prince George Wharf, the vendors may soon be able to call their original spot on Bay Street home once again.
Once the three phases are completed, it will be a building that all Bahamians can be proud of, Minister of Trade and Industry Leslie Miller predicts.
The first phase will be the straw market itself; the second will include a handicraft and souvenir building, to be erected where the straw vendors are currently located presently, next to the Pompey Museum on Bay Street. The building will be called the Heroes Centre.
In the third and final phase, the Ministry proposes to transform the Prince George Wharf into a boardwalk, where no vehicular traffic will be allowed.
In December, the Ministry and the Nassau Tourism Development Board sent out invitations to all architects in the country to submit designs for the market, which are to include 500 stalls for the existing vendors.
A team of judges will make their final selection in a few weeks for the best design of the multi-purpose, “state-of-the-art” facility planned to attract tourists and Bahamian shoppers.
Minister Miller said the new straw market would not emulate the “flea market” that exists today.
“As the straw market exists now and has been for the past 20 years, you cannot, in any stretch of the imagination call that a full-scale Bahamian straw market. All the straw market is, in all its intent and purpose, is a big flea market. Let’s be real, it’s just a flea market.
“Where every week those women out there go to Miami, buy their stuff from the flea market and bring it back here. This time we’re going to make it better,” Mr. Miller said.
By Khashan Poitier, The Nassau Guardian
