In the heart of T&T's capital city is a car park being run by the former tenants of the People's Mall. While conducting brisk business, the $5-an-hour car park is substitute land use which should, ideally, have housed an eight-storey new People's Mall. Those plans remain conceptual five years after the ramshackle People's Mall was gutted by a six-hour fire on April 9, 2005. The People's Mall Company Ltd (PMCL)-a registered company with more than 200 shareholders-now owes millions for contracted design work, with no sight of a building in the immediate future. However, Jearlean John, chairman of the Urban Development Corporation of T&T (Udecott), told the Business Guardian the People's Mall will be revisited as part of Udecott's urban renewal project. She said she aims to meet with the board of the People's Mall. In addition, she observed that Udecott is also pursuing conceptuals for the Salvatori Building which, she says is aimed at rehabilitating Port-of Spain. She said the Housing Development Corporation's Eastbridge Project would also aid in the vision to expand the Waterfront Project and rehabilitate the city.
Her goal, she said, is to bring the middle-class back to Port-of Spain. The company's business plan has sat idle since the People's Partnership came into government. And debts are mounting. "PMCL has made commitments extending to millions of dollars and events triggered by the planned start of the project in 2008 was supposed to help us begin to meet these. Most of these commitments were for consultancy services, and any further delay in the project will have serious consequences for PMCL regarding all its commitments and, indeed, will give rise to more," the company's last business plan outlined. Zephrine Snagg, interim chairman of the People's Mall, sat down for this Business Guardian interview with two directors Eddie Simmons and Bryan Stow at their one-room office on Hart Street.
Snagg told the Business Guardian that an architect was contracted based on the Patrick Manning-led Government's promise to lease several floors of the building. The proposed four-storey building was revised to eight storeys to accommodate the request of the former prime minister.
These cost of additional revision were borne by the PMCL. The business plan observed: "In order to make the inputs necessary for bringing the project to this stage over the last 15 years or more we had to put together a team of specialist technical, financial and legal consultants, some of whom we paid, others we paid partially, and committed to paying balances when the project got started and others who worked on the basis of success. "As owners of the project and with the expectation of our being involved in all decisions to be made for the full life of the project, it was not unreasonable to assume that we would have been in a position to ensure that such commitments would have been honoured. This expectation was supported by an memorandum of understanding which we at PMCL established with Udecott on the November 7, 2005." The land was acquired in the 1979, by the first Dr Eric Williams-led Government, after a massive fire which destroyed some businesses, including Maraj Jewellers, Baksh Jewellers Ltd and United Grocers. The land was then given to vendors, who later formed the Vendors Association, to set up shop. "In 1981, it started with tables and stalls, but in the later half of the 80s, people started to erect stalls to leave their goods. Nipdec was put in charge of re-building the mall," recalled Stow, a director of the People's Mall.
Stow recalled that a company called the Peoples' Mall Company Ltd was set up in 1992 specifically to progress the ownership and development of the land. Simmons explained that with the lease in hand, the group began the formal process of engaging consultants to prepare a business plans and a comprehensive architectural, engineering and services designs, with outline approval being sought and obtained from the Town and Country Planning Division. Stow noted that everything was paid for and co-ordinated by the PMCL. Snagg explained that after meetings with the former prime minister, the People's Mall proceeded to change their original design to include an additional four storeys on the suggestion of Manning. The project was then referred to Udecott and was tendered on April 15, 2008. Only one high-priced bid was received by Bouygues Batiment. Snagg explained that dissatisfied with the burgeoning cost of the project, the People's Mall went back to Manning, who referred the issue to the Ministry of Planning. The project has been static since then. The company's business plan identified two areas of concern: their lease with the State and their membership.
The lease offered by the State in July 17, 2006, has a clause requiring PMCL to commence construction work within a specific timeframe, which has now expired. "Our failure to meet this deadline has been due to failure and delay on the part of the State. We have requested that the State amends or remove this clause so that our lease is reestablished on terms that take cognisance of this reality and what is being currently proposed by the State if our recommendations are not followed. "The imperative coming out of these arguments and analyses is that we must start the project very soon and we are hoping that this is the last of the several business/implementation plans we have had to prepare and the project is put on the timeline we are proposing," the plan stated. While the membership wait for their mall, they've simply erected wood-and-galvanise structures along the corner of Queen and Frederick Street to ply their trade once again. The PMCL plan observed: "Our membership has exercised admirable discipline and restraint, despite their ongoing financial losses, in not returning to the site and continuing business as usual after the last fire of four years ago. This discipline and restraint was encouraged by the promised start-up date for construction in late 2008, the evidence of completed drawings, the invitation for proposals put out by Udecott, the putting in place of measures by PMCL to demonstrate its readiness for playing its part and the engagement of professionals who were visibly and actively working on our behalf. "The fact that start up has not taken place has been disappointing, to say the very least, and the restraint on the part of our members and our consultants cannot continue for much longer in the absence of signs of progress for the last five months or so and continuing. "We, who are charged with the responsibility for managing the operations of PMCL, are daily being pressed for information on progress and cannot continue for much longer to ask our membership to sacrifice and hold particularly while we continue to spend or commit members' time and funds," it stated.
The concerns of the PMCL board are as follows
• Negatives impacts to downtown and downtown shop owners and shoppers.
• Its plans would again become overtaken by time and circumstances and will have to be revised. Such revisions will result in further cash outlay and increased project costs to PMCL.
• Increased risk that the project will either not come off or will take a long time to do so.
• Disillusionment among our members and the loss of credibility to those of us entrusted to deliver on the project.
• The probable reversion of the site to what it was before the fire four years ago.
• Loss of established customers.
The Business Guardian understands that wary of promises made by the past administration, the Government has held its hand on following through with new projects until they are reviewed. The Government has already been saddled with a $109 million debt-accrued interest on a loan-for Transcorp's Broadgate Place project. Broadgate Place project, an $800 million 26-storey office complex to be located at Broadway, Port-of-Spain, has been denied construction permission by the Town and Country Planning Division. The matter is still before the High Court. Snagg and Simmons say they have requested a formal meeting with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on the project, but have not received any response.