City Council proposes Mae’s School remains 14 more months on Farnum Ground

Last Updated on Tuesday, 16 September 2025, 22:31 by Writer

City Mayor Alfred Mentore on Monday said the City Council has proposed that Mae’s School be given another 14 months to remain on Farnum Ground, Subryanville in a prefabricated structure by which time a new school will be constructed on the burnt-out site on Third Avenue.

“We’re staying to the end of December 2026 when you will have a new school term going into January. He (the school’s owner) must be ready and finished and replace and remove everything from the ground and he must have that (new) building up and running,” Mr Mentore said. He said a written, binding agreement would be signed, and would include penalties if the prefab school building was not removed.

Subryanville community representative Attorney-at-Law Elizabeth Dean-Hughes did not agree with the proposal. “We don’t want that because that’s the beginning of a new term. You cannot disturb children. You end it at the end of the school year,” she said. She insisted that the children be removed from the construction site.

While again admitting that the residents of Subryanville were not consulted before a decision was taken in March in the aftermath of the fire to allow the school to use prefabricated structures on Farnum Ground, Mr Mentore said a draft agreement would be provided to representatives of the Subryanville community on Wednesday.

Attorney-at-Law Manoj Narayan, who is representing the owner of Mae’s, David Sugrim, asked for the prefab school to remain on Farnum Ground for the next 18 months – March 2027 – to allow for the new school to be constructed. He said Mr Sugrim was willing to sign an agreement that would also include maintenance of the ground.

The lawyer sought to assure the Mayor and city councillors that the prefab building would be removed. “It is only for the temporary use. At the end of that process, that ground will be restored to better conditions than it was before and return to previous usage by the students solely for recreational purposes,” he said.

The lawyer also said plans for the construction of the new school on the land where the razed school was located, had been submitted to the single window system of the Central Housing and Planning Authority for approval. He said his client would be drilling piles at the site instead of driving them down in a manner that would cause noise and vibration.

The Mayor reported that Mr Sugrim, told him that they resorted to using the prefab structures because water from heavy rainfall was seeping under the tents. In her comments, community representative Ms Dean-Hughes asked the Mayor and other c0uncillors present to limit the permit to the current prefabricated structure and allow the school to remain on Farnum Ground until December 2025. She made an unsuccessful request for the works to be stopped while City Hall proves that it owns any part of the Farnum Ground, and the ownership of Mae’s.

The Mayor sent a copy of the application to construct the new permanent school building to Ms Dean-Hughes which contains all relevant information that she could use to track down information about the school and its owner from the Registry. He also promised to provide the Transport Number to Ms Dean-Hughes for her to do her due diligence. “We will give you the Transport Number and you will go across at the Court and check on it because that is not my responsibility. That is what you want, you will go and look for that,” he said.

She feared that eventually Subryanville would eventually lose that part of Farnum Ground because more extensions would be granted in the name of the children.

Ms Dean-Hughes bemoaned that children were attending school on a construction site, but Mr Narayan, whose children attend Mae’s School, said “I am comfortable with my children being there at the time of construction.” “I don’t know since when the danger of the children is a factor to parents who don’t have children in that school,” he said. Civil society activist, Vidyaratha Kissoon interjected, saying the laws frown on “invoking” children.

Mr Narayan told the meeting that he was “personally” aware that Mr Sugrim had failed to rent the building that had housed the American school. He also said the school’s owner had considered renting a high-rise building on Camp and Robb streets that once housed Teleperformance, but that would have been a “logistical and travel nightmare”. He said there were no permanent fixtures, fittings, erections or piles. Instead, he said concrete piles had been laid and the prefab structures built on them.

Mr Narayan explained that Mr Sugrim acquired all the rights, interests and goodwill in the land and buildings from Ms Mayfield French who was trading as Mae’s School.

City Councillor Clayton Hinds queried more than once whether the community uses Farnum Ground except for the occasional barbecue. He added that the eastern end of the ground was always available for use by Mae’s School for recreational purposes in keeping with an agreement with the community.