Ch­aguara­mas, lo­cat­ed on Trinidad's north west penin­su­la, con­sists of 14,500 acres of prime re­al es­tate. The area is rich in his­to­ry, ripe for in­vest­ment and is now tar­get­ed for sub­stan­tial de­vel­op­ment.

Not for the first time, big de­vel­op­ment plans have been drawn up for the area which has long been a favourite des­ti­na­tion for leisure and recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties, with its scenic moun­tains, coves and near­by is­lands. Over the years, there have been var­i­ous plans for the de­vel­op­ment of the penin­su­la, in­clud­ing the Ch­aguara­mas Ac­tion Plan drawn up in 1968, just a few years af­ter the area had been tak­en back from Unit­ed States which was us­ing it as a mil­i­tary base.

There have been var­i­ous land use poli­cies and strate­gic de­vel­op­ment plans, none of which have ful­ly ex­ploit­ed the po­ten­tial of the area. The con­sis­tent thread in all those plans has been the knowl­edge that Ch­aguara­mas of­fers unique op­por­tu­ni­ties for de­vel­op­ment of tourism, leisure, ma­rine-re­lat­ed in­dus­tries and agri­cul­ture be­yond what cur­rent­ly takes place.

To this day, the most de­vel­oped ar­eas of Ch­aguara­mas re­mains those that were once oc­cu­pied by the US naval base–and it was there for just over 20 years. Now there seems to be a flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ty in the area. The re­cent­ly con­struct­ed board­walk and the zi­pline fa­cil­i­ties are the lat­est leisure at­trac­tions draw­ing crowds to that cor­ner of T&T.

For­eign in­vest­ment is wel­come. From an eco­nom­ic stand­point–for the base was at the heart of thriv­ing lo­cal econ­o­my–it would be good if the area be­came syn­ony­mous with oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty be­sides hav­ing a fa­cil­i­ty that helped the Al­lies wage a suc­cess­ful war, as proud a his­to­ry as that was. How­ev­er, all the par­ties–gov­ern­ment and in­vestors–need to ad­dress the con­cerns that would hin­der the ef­fi­cient set­ting up of busi­ness­es that make good use of the po­ten­tial of the area and help the eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

There have been ques­tions raised about how the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment is pro­tect­ed, or the his­tor­i­cal sites lo­cat­ed there are pre­served. That cor­ner of Trinidad has a no­table his­to­ry. Ch­aguara­mas was to have been the lo­ca­tion for the short-lived West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion and it was where the Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas was signed es­tab­lish­ing the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and Com­mon Mar­ket (Cari­com) in 1973.

In fact, that penin­su­la has been the scene of count­less his­toric events, from the time of Colum­bus, through the two World Wars, pre-In­de­pen­dence T&T, and the Cari­com treaty. None of this should be for­got­ten. All that should be seen as op­por­tu­ni­ties for imag­i­na­tive de­vel­op­ment rather than threats to change.

Op­por­tu­ni­ties to weave what makes the area spe­cial in­to the de­vel­op­ment plans for the area. The Gov­ern­ment and its pri­vate sec­tor part­ners must do a bet­ter job of ar­tic­u­lat­ing their plans for the area. They should start by clear­ly ex­plain­ing their plans for the use of Ch­aguara­mas Re­sort and Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, the ac­tu­al birth­place of Cari­com.

More specif­i­cal­ly, the onus is on the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA), the state agency re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ment of the area, to ar­tic­u­late an eco-friend­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment mod­el. It must be bold in ex­plain­ing the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, and forth­right in its guar­an­tees that the nec­es­sary busi­ness in­vest­ment would not come at the ex­pense of what makes the area spe­cial.

With at­trac­tive in­cen­tives be­ing of­fered, in­clud­ing tax hol­i­days and du­ty con­ces­sions, the CDA will prob­a­bly have no dif­fi­cul­ty at­tract­ing in­vestors, par­tic­u­lar­ly for tourism and recre­ation­al projects. In fact, among the projects which have been in the pipeline for years is a Dis­ney-style theme park com­plete with rides, a wa­ter park and oth­er at­trac­tions, with the ad­ja­cent lands ex­pect­ed to be de­vel­oped for a range of sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

The plan seems to be to at­tract large scale tourism, which can make a con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try's GDP.The mes­sage must be trans­mit­ted to the CDA's for­eign and lo­cal busi­ness part­ners too that Trinidad and To­ba­go is open for busi­ness, but the coun­try will make sure that all due care and dili­gence are tak­en with our his­tor­i­cal lega­cy and en­vi­ron­men­tal lega­cy.

As they in­vite in­vestors to bid for and take part in joint ven­tures or lease arrange­ments, the di­rec­tors of the CDA must demon­strate at all times that there is trans­paren­cy, full ac­count­abil­i­ty, and that sound busi­ness prac­tices and ethics are ob­served.