And Now Grenada Must Invest in Its Own Heritage Future
A crumbling courthouse in St George’s has just done something no policy paper could: it has put Small Island Developing States at the centre of a conversation about who gets to decide the fate of the world’s heritage.
What began as a public-safety order to demolish a dangerous building has become an international case study in what happens when a small state refuses to choose between safety and memory.
This is the story of the Drill Yard — and of how Grenada, almost by necessity, rewired the way heritage decisions get made.
From Demolition Order to International Case Study
The Drill Yard matter began as a local, technical and urgent problem. A structure in St George’s was judged dangerous, and demolition was proposed. Then a court stepped in: a Consent Order required independent assessment before any final decision could be made.
What followed was remarkable. The Grenada National Trust, working with local professionals, the Government, the Grenada National Museum, the National Insurance Scheme, the Planning and Development Authority, INTO, ICOFORT, Leap3D, Monumentenbezit and a global circle of heritage practitioners, turned a legal deadline into something far bigger.
The Consent Order required the Trust to bring a specialist team — including a Preventative Engineer — to Grenada to assess the Drill Yard by 31 August 2026. It did. Bas Notenboom of Leap3D, Robin Koot, Isabella van den Bussche and Peter Wallace arrived on the ground, backed by remote conservation, structural and fortification advisers Adri Verhoef, Jeroen van der Werf and Mark van den Bos. Their work carried the issue from emergency legal protection into rigorous professional assessment.
But the real story is what happened next: a local matter became an international heritage case study. Grenada moved from assumption to measurement, from visual impression to documentation, and from emergency reaction to informed decision-making.
The World Arrives at St George’s
On 1 September, a Virtual Technical Briefing put Grenada before an international audience, sharing evidence from the Drill Yard, the Antilles Complex, Fort George and the wider Historic St George’s documentation work. The goal was not to announce conclusions — it was to brief Dr Milagros Flores-Román and the ICOFORT team, inform partners, and prepare for a technical visit on 2–4 September.
Dr Ezra Matthias opened the session with a clear caveat: this was not a final determination on demolition, preservation, adaptive reuse or World Heritage status. It was a record of what had been documented, what had been observed, and what questions remained.
What began as a local matter, he noted, had become part of a much larger conversation — how small island states document, assess, protect, interpret and sustainably use their heritage.
Darryl Brathwaite, President of the GNT, framed the stakes squarely: how should Grenada respond when a site is both a public-safety risk and a place of deep cultural, historical and civic importance? His answer was unambiguous — public safety must be taken seriously, but it should never mean automatic demolition without proper assessment.
He pointed out that the Drill Yard’s significance lies not only in its condition but in its setting: it sits within a layered landscape connecting Fort George, the Antilles Complex, the Grenada National Museum, Young Street and the historic harbour town of St George’s.
Then came the Government’s voice. Hon. Adrian Thomas, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Industries, welcomed the international experts — Dr Milagros Flores-Román and ICOFORT, Catherine Leonard and INTO, Bas Notenboom and Leap3D, Monumentenbezit, the GNT, the Grenada National Museum, NIS, PDA, local professionals, tourism stakeholders, cultural practitioners and students.
“Public safety and heritage stewardship should not be treated as opposing objectives.” — Hon. Adrian Thomas, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Industries
The Minister was direct: the Drill Yard is not merely about old buildings. It is about public safety, identity, memory, law, tourism, planning, investment and national development. Grenada, he said, must manage danger responsibly without losing its history before it even understands what that history is.
That single idea now defines the new heritage ecosystem: safety and heritage are not enemies. Evidence must come before demolition. Documentation must come before destruction. Memory must be organised before it disappears.
A Global Network, Not a Solo Effort
Catherine Leonard of INTO placed Grenada within a wider family of National Trusts, emphasising international solidarity and professional generosity — the kind of network that let the Drill Yard decision be informed by the best available evidence.
INTO has since carried Grenada’s story across its own global platform under a theme of solidarity buying time for the Drill Yard. The scale of that network is worth pausing on. INTO’s own material describes a global movement of more than 100 member organisations spanning over 80 nations and territories. ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, reports more than 12,000 members across over 130 countries and territories, organised into over 110 National Committees.
Through ICOFORT — one of ICOMOS’s specialist committees — Grenada’s forts, tunnels, harbour relationships and military-civic landscape are now part of a genuinely global conversation.
Dr Milagros Flores-Román brought the technical language of fortifications, military heritage, authenticity, integrity and World Heritage readiness. Her role, and ICOFORT’s, was to help the team work through questions of authenticity, integrity and conservation for military structures.
Her site visit on 3–4 September was not ceremonial — it was shaped by her observation that Historic St George’s, including the Drill Yard, Antilles
Complex and Fort George, is too complex to be treated as a single archaeological site.
That leaves Grenada with a sharper, more sophisticated question to answer: is the strongest frame Fort George alone, a fortified system, a military-civic precinct, a wider fortified urban landscape, a serial system, or a staged pathway?
The answer will shape everything from conservation priorities to any future World Heritage bid — and it has already earned Grenada a seat at ICOFORT’s 2026 conference in Matsue, Japan, where the Trust will present on whether Grenada’s fortified landscape should be read as a defensive system, a symbolic landscape, or a hybrid military-civic urban ensemble.
What the Evidence Actually Shows
Grenada’s case is strong today because it is no longer just a story — it has evidence. Leap3D documented the Drill Yard’s interior and exterior, completed a full terrestrial 3D survey of the Antilles Complex, captured Fort George in photography, 360-degree panoramas and video, and mapped tunnels, routes, view lines and landscape relationships across Historic St George’s.
That matters more than it might sound. Every successful heritage project starts with a reliable record of reality. A point-cloud survey means engineers, conservation specialists, archaeologists, historians, planners and international advisers can all measure, inspect and compare the exact same evidence — remotely, and without argument over what they are actually looking at.
Bas Notenboom captured the human stakes of that technical work. The Drill Yard, he wrote, is not only masonry — it is about what happened, where, and in what order. The building is where the story is anchored. Built around 1740, it was once Grenada’s first courthouse and prison, connected to Fort George, and later served as a residence, a clinic, a corn mill, and the site of Grenada’s first calypso tent.
The technical condition summary reached a careful, useful conclusion. It did not deny the danger, and it did not pretend the building is sound. It said something more valuable: demolition is not the only option; substantial historic fabric remains; the first priority is to secure and stabilise the site; and final decisions require both a heritage significance assessment and in- depth structural investigation.
Condition and significance must now be assessed together — and the greater the heritage significance, the greater the obligation to investigate repair, strengthening and retention before demolition.
How a Small State Rewired the System
This is how SIDS changed the heritage ecosystem forever. Grenada has shown that small states do not have to wait for large countries, large agencies or large budgets to tell them what to do.
A small, muscular, statutory heritage body — with limited resources and part-time capacity — used human capital, social capital and reputational capital to mobilise a genuinely global network, convening expertise from Grenada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Puerto Rico, the United States, Malta, Zanzibar/Tanzania, Australia, Poland, Mexico, Barbados, Egypt and beyond.
That is precisely why Government should stop treating the GNT as a cost centre. It is a productive national-development institution — a platform for research, diplomacy, technical assistance, cultural tourism, heritage education, diaspora mobilisation, youth opportunity and international visibility.
The world, meanwhile, is already moving in this direction. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee adopted a SIDS Strategy for 2026–2034 in July 2026, prioritising environmental and climate resilience, human, technical and financial capacity, heritage governance, and local-community engagement.
UNESCO’s SIDS programme explicitly calls for resources to help small island states implement the World Heritage Convention. Grenada is no longer outside that agenda — Grenada is now inside it.
Turning Heritage Into an Economy
The opportunities keep multiplying. A workshop hosted by the Dutch Caribbean Heritage Platform in Bonaire on describing and valuing monuments aligns directly with the GNT’s emerging work on heritage asset valuation.
Grenada has more than 25 known historic heritage assets — many in distress, none systematically valued. The Trust’s position is simple: governments know exactly what their roads, airports, ports and public buildings are worth. Almost none know what their heritage estate is worth.
The GNT is now pursuing a larger research agenda — From Heritage Stock to Public Value: A Risk-Adjusted Governance Model of Pride, Identity and Locally Retained Economic Development in Small Island Developing States — with an illustrative funding request of US$420,000 over 32 months.
The project reflects what the Drill Yard has made obvious: heritage is not only about memory. It is about governance, uncertainty, pride, identity, local value and development.
The economic logic is straightforward. A properly managed heritage platform centered on Fort George, the Drill Yard, the Antilles Complex, the Museum, the tunnels, harbour views and historic routes could transform the visitor experience.
World Heritage status, if credibly pursued, is no magic wand — it demands management plans, buffer zones, conservation standards, visitor controls, community consultation, transport planning and sustained investment.
But the growth channels are clear: more visitors require more interpretation, more interpretation requires trained guides, historians, storytellers and educators, and longer stays support hotels, restaurants, taxis, craft vendors and a whole tier of small enterprise.
If Grenada eventually doubles, triples or quadruples the value of its heritage- tourism offer, it will be because it invested now — in evidence, institutions, safety, interpretation and local ownership.
A Diaspora Ready to Be Called
This is also a diaspora matter. Grenada should now create a Diaspora Technical Corps and a Diaspora Development Exchange. If the country needed fifty specialised professionals for national-development projects tomorrow, the State should be able to identify and deploy them within 48 hours.
It currently cannot — and the GNT’s mobilisation of the Drill Yard team has just shown exactly how that gap can begin to close.
The local community must sit at the centre of all of this, too. Heritage cannot be a project done to Grenadians — it has to be built with them. Communities around Fort George, the Carenage, Young Street, the Museum, Fort Matthew, Fort Frederick and the wider historic town must have a real say in decisions about access, traffic, interpretation, commerce, safety, ceremony, memory and benefit-sharing.
The scope discussion on 4 September rightly identified community consultation, published research findings, legal and management frameworks, and governance structures able to survive political change as the next essential steps.
A Sharper Government Action Agenda
Grenada cannot applaud the international attention and then quietly underfund the institution that earned it. Government must now move from encouragement to execution.
The table below sets out a year-long sequence of concrete, dated commitments — from an approved readiness programme this month to a published heritage economy strategy by mid-2027.
The Choice Ahead
The question for Grenadians is a direct one: how does a very small Caribbean economy turn a geographically scattered heritage stock into a permanent national-development resource?
The answer has begun at the Drill Yard. But the answer must not end there.
Grenada must now support the GNT, strengthen the Museum, coordinate PDA, NIS, GTA, the Ministry and civil society, and treat heritage as part of the country’s development machinery — not an afterthought to it.
The Drill Yard showed the world that Grenada can lead. Now Grenada must show itself that it believes in what it has built.
SIDS have changed the heritage ecosystem forever. Grenada helped prove it. The next decision belongs to us.
Dr Ezra B. Matthias is First Vice President of the Grenada National Trust