The Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT) has reis­sued a ten­der for a shop­ping mall and en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre at the Pi­ar­co AeroPark, lo­cat­ed near the North Ter­mi­nal of Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.The project, which is pro­ject­ed to be the Caribbean's first air­port city or aero­trop­o­lis, will cov­er 168 acres in its first phase with zones for du­ty-free shop­ping, a ho­tel and con­fer­ence cen­tre, gen­er­al re­tail, in­door en­ter­tain­ment and out­door recre­ation, tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vice com­pa­nies, ware­hous­es, in­ter­na­tion­al trade and avi­a­tion-re­lat­ed ser­vices.

AATT di­rec­tor Maria Gon­salves, speak­ing at a cock­tail re­cep­tion re­cent­ly, said the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty at the Pi­ar­co AeroPark will add sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the GDP of the coun­try with the cre­ation of new jobs span­ning var­i­ous sec­tors, from re­tail to man­u­fac­tur­ing, car­go and air­craft re­pair."There will al­so be train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for staff in new in­dus­tries such as the MRO and new rev­enue streams from for­eign in­vest­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go," she said.

Gon­salves, an at­tor­ney, said Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is the third largest air­port in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean in terms of over­all pas­sen­ger move­ments and the sev­enth largest over­all when Cu­ba and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic are in­clud­ed."Fur­ther­more, the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port is emerg­ing as a hub for air car­go in the South­ern Caribbean. De­vel­op­ments in the en­er­gy sec­tor, im­ports of health­care and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies and the rise of In­ter­net shop­ping are ma­jor dri­vers for the growth of air car­go," she said.

"The ex­pan­sion of car­go fa­cil­i­ties at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port will al­low the com­pa­nies that op­er­ate there to ac­com­mo­date more car­go."Copies of the re­quest for pro­pos­al are al­ready avail­able and there will be a pre-pro­pos­al con­fer­ence and fa­cil­i­ty tour on April 29 at the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion Cen­tre at Pi­ar­co.The dead­line for sub­mis­sion of pro­pos­als is Sep­tem­ber 3.