The ag­o­nis­ing­ly slow pace of restora­tion works at sev­er­al key ar­chi­tec­tur­al land­marks in Port-of-Spain re­mains a se­ri­ous con­cern, as the T&T Guardian has re­port­ed over the past two days.

It's a wor­ry for con­ser­va­tion­ists, who see build­ings de­te­ri­o­rat­ing faster than they can be re­paired, for their oc­cu­pants, who are dis­lo­cat­ed by these lengthy projects, and by the pub­lic, who see their pat­ri­mo­ny point­less­ly shroud­ed by ap­par­ent­ly aban­doned scaf­fold­ing for years at a time.Cost over­runs are com­mon­place, works seem to have no firm end dates and na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions must live with the slights as­so­ci­at­ed with be­ing re­lo­cat­ed for years at a time to tem­po­rary lo­ca­tions that seem to stretch on for alarm­ing du­ra­tions.The first ef­fort at restor­ing Stollmey­er's Cas­tle be­gan in 1987, when the build­ing was placed in the care of the ac­tivist con­ser­va­tion group Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion.

The group host­ed fundrais­ers and al­lowed some events at the build­ing to pay for in­cre­men­tal restora­tion works, but it's an ex­pen­sive busi­ness and the cas­tle even­tu­al­ly re­vert­ed to the State. Ude­cott for­mal­ly be­gan ma­jor restora­tion works in 2008, and of all the ma­jor build­ings now be­ing re­stored, it is the clos­est to com­ple­tion.Ude­cott hopes to hand over the project in De­cem­ber.

Be­tween 2003 and 2011, $200 mil­lion was de­clared to have been spent on the restora­tion of the Red House in a run­ning project man­aged by Nipdec.It made lit­tle dif­fer­ence.In Sep­tem­ber 2011, Par­lia­ment was moved to Tow­er D at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, where it's like­ly to re­main un­til some time in 2016.The Red House restora­tion project hit at least one ma­jor unan­tic­i­pat­ed stum­bling block to go along with de­lays in the re­lease of mon­ey for the project: the dis­cov­ery, in March, of skele­tal re­mains and his­tor­i­cal ar­ti­facts at the site.The bones date from be­tween 430 AD and 1390 AD and have at­tract­ed the in­ter­est of ar­chae­ol­o­gists as well as the con­cerns of lo­cal in­dige­nous peo­ples.

So for six months, an ar­chae­o­log­i­cal team will be ex­plor­ing the site.In June, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing, Land and Ma­rine Af­fairs, an­nounced that White­hall would be­come the new site of the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.In 2010, the cost for the restora­tion of White­hall when it was be­ing con­sid­ered as a cen­tre for pro­to­col was set at $15 mil­lion.The most hu­mil­i­at­ing of the four re­mains the col­lapse of Pres­i­dent's House, a project which is still to be­gin.Pre­lim­i­nary work–con­sist­ing on­ly of a more for­mal tem­po­rary roof over the struc­ture–is sched­uled for Au­gust and the ten­der­ing process for restora­tion is sched­uled to be­gin in No­vem­ber. These are on­ly the projects on the front burn­er.Oth­er crit­i­cal projects like the Mille Fleurs restora­tion haven't even been sched­uled.There are cer­tain­ly enough restora­tion projects un­der way and pend­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er cre­at­ing a task-fo­cused agency ded­i­cat­ed to dri­ving these del­i­cate projects to ef­fec­tive–and ear­li­er–com­ple­tion.Har­ness­ing the scarce re­sources ded­i­cat­ed to restora­tion sure­ly could not leave the build­ings any worse off than they al­ready are.