Gov­ern­ment is em­bark­ing on a plan for a dou­bles pavil­ion in Debe and a $13 mil­lion project to make Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Port-of-Spain, a tourism cen­tre, says Tourism Min­is­ter Ru­pert Grif­fith. Both are part of an over­all $37 mil­lion do­mes­tic tourism up­grade, Grif­fith said at yes­ter­day's week­ly Gov­ern­ment me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair. He said Cab­i­net had ap­proved sev­er­al do­mes­tic tourism projects in Trinidad. Grif­fith said the Debe dou­bles pavil­ion plan, en­com­pass­ing a block, would al­low space for eight more ven­dors as well as the ven­dors al­ready in the area. He said the fa­cil­i­ty would con­form to health and En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty stan­dards.

Grif­fith said the area could be a tourism hotspot and since dou­bles was now recog­nised glob­al­ly as part of in­dige­nous cui­sine, T&T al­so could be­come a dou­bles cen­tre.. He did not give the pavil­ion's cost. He said talks on the Ari­api­ta Av­enue project had been held with the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, busi­ness peo­ple, res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er stake­hold­ers. He said it was pro­posed to di­vert traf­fic from the area and es­tab­lish kiosks , as well as sig­nage, tree cul­ti­va­tion and food courts. He said oth­er plans in­clud­ed a $1.9 mil­lion Amerindi­an vil­lage on 25 acres of Blan­chisseuse Road land, with which the San­ta Rosa Carib com­mu­ni­ty was as­sist­ing. This was part of the her­itage tourism thrust, he added. Grif­fith said the re­de­vel­oped Knollys' Tun­nel, Tabaquite, would be re­opened this week. He said al­so card­ed for re­de­vel­op­ment, in a $4 mil­lion plan for cen­tral Trinidad, were the Li­on House, the In­do-Caribbean Mu­se­um and the Tem­ple in the Sea.

Oth­er projects in­clud­ed a $5 mil­lion up­grade for the Las Cuevas beach fa­cil­i­ty, in­clud­ing test­ing the wa­ter to en­sure it was safe for bathing. He said a $5 mil­lion up­grade was planned for Ves­signy beach as well as en­hanc­ing the La Brea pitch lake project. Oth­er up­grades were planned for Los Iros, Quinam and Colum­bus Bay beach­es, he said. Al­so part of the plan, the min­is­ter added, were the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Botan­ic Gar­dens and Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade. The plan in­clud­ed a $1.5 mil­lion tourism safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty as­pect, he said. Grif­fith said some fund­ing for the plan was in the 2012 bud­get, while the rest would come from the 2013 bud­get's Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Plan.