With all the emphasis on the elections and the closure of the West Bay Road a piece of legislature was passed in the Legislative Assembly that had much significance on our islands planning regulations without a whimper.

There wasn’t even a squeak as the outgoing government made changes to the Cayman Islands’ Development and Planning Regulations, enabling taller and denser apartment developments closer to the ocean.

I will repeat this just in case it passed by your glimpse at my Editorial. Taller and denser developments will now be allowed closer to the ocean.

On the 17^th May new regulations were gazetted in the beach resort/residential zone. This is a transition zone between the hotel/tourism zone and the low density residential zone.

According to the Department of Planning’s guide to development and planning regulations, permitted uses in the beach resort/residential zone include beach resorts, detached houses, semi-detached houses and duplexes. The Central Planning Authority can also choose to permit guest houses, apartments, cottage colonies and tourism-related developments in the zone.

So what do these new regulations allow?

The maximum height of beach resort/residential developments increases from 40 feet (or 3 storeys) to 55 feet (or 4 storeys).

In the case of a 4-storey building, the regulations contain a restriction that “no continuous vertical facade or elevation exceeds 25 feet or 2 storeys in height”. This means taller developments cannot tower imposingly over adjacent properties.

The facade of a 3-storey building will now rise vertically the entire height of the building. The previous regulations the 2-storey vertical facade restriction was in place for 3-storey buildings as well.

Setbacks: the previous regulations specified a minimum ocean setback of 75 feet from the mean high water mark. The new regulations preserve that 75-foot setback, except where the development sits on ironshore. The minimum setback there has been reduced to 50 feet from the mean high water mark.

Beach resorts can be 30 bedrooms per acre.

Cottage colonies can be eight units per acre.

Detached houses, semi-detached houses and three-bedroom duplexes can be four units per acre.

Guesthouses can be 30 bedrooms per acre.

The minimum lot size for an apartment development in the beach resort/residential zone is half an acre.

So how does all this compare to the loss of a piece of the West Bay Road? Taller buildings are OK along our waterfront?

Did these new regulations squeak past you? They did me. Too late to whimper about it now. Unless I get Ezzard on my side.