GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Cap­i­tal is pour­ing in­to Trinidad’s pri­ma­ry tran­sit artery. Mod­ern com­mer­cial cen­tres have risen along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way, strate­gi­cal­ly po­si­tioned in Aranguez, Pi­ar­co and Trinci­ty to cap­ture the surg­ing con­sumer de­mand of a grow­ing pop­u­lace.

In Aranguez, high-den­si­ty re­tail spaces like Icon Plaza and the ad­ja­cent Xtra Plaza have es­tab­lished a thriv­ing com­mer­cial foot­print as Sara Ali, co-own­er of Icon Plaza, high­light­ed the site was strate­gi­cal­ly se­lect­ed for its cen­tral ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

“This area we found was per­fect—it’s al­most eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to every­one be­cause at any point in the day you have to pass through that high­way to get to and from to your des­ti­na­tion,” Ali ex­plained.

Fur­ther east, ma­jor de­vel­op­ments like the new­ly con­struct­ed Pen­ny­wise Plaza in Trinci­ty and Pi­ar­co Plaza are ce­ment­ing this shift.

Pi­ar­co Plaza has es­tab­lished it­self as a dy­nam­ic re­tail and lifestyle hub near the air­port tran­sit zone, cap­tur­ing high-vol­ume com­muter traf­fic with an­chor ex­pe­ri­ences like Food Hall—Trinidad’s first “gro­cer­ant.”

For long-stand­ing lo­cal en­ter­pris­es, re­lo­cat­ing to these high­way-ad­ja­cent sites has proven crit­i­cal for op­er­a­tional suc­cess.

Pat & Max Ltd, a provider of print­ing and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card so­lu­tions, re­cent­ly moved its pri­ma­ry op­er­a­tions from the East­ern Main Road in Tu­na­puna to the Trinci­ty In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Melis­sa Sen­house ex­plained that con­ve­nience was the pri­ma­ry dri­ver be­hind the move, not­ing that “Tu­na­puna is the cen­tre of the East-West Cor­ri­dor,” but op­er­at­ing di­rect­ly off the high­way of­fers dis­tinct ad­van­tages.

“Be­cause we are right off of the high­way, you don’t have to deal with go­ing on­to the East­ern Main Road where there is a lot of traf­fic in Tu­na­puna,” Sen­house stat­ed, “You ba­si­cal­ly just swing off of the high­way, come to where we are, and then you go back on the high­way and car­ry on. We have ab­solute­ly no re­grets about the move... if any­thing, we have strength­ened re­la­tion­ships with the busi­ness­es in the area, in the in­dus­tri­al es­tate.”

Eco­nom­ic de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion

Eval­u­at­ing this struc­tur­al shift, de­vel­op­ment econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs views the growth as a vi­tal de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty rather than busi­ness­es sim­ply aban­don­ing Port-of-Spain as this is part­ly a re­sponse to where peo­ple now live, work and in­creas­ing­ly want to shop as well as ac­cess ser­vices.

“I see it as a de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty and an in­crease in ur­ban com­mer­cial hubs. Traf­fic con­ges­tion is al­so an im­por­tant fac­tor that may be dri­ving the de­vel­op­ment of these ur­ban com­mer­cial hubs. If peo­ple can shop, eat and ac­cess ser­vices clos­er to where they live, they save both time and trans­porta­tion costs, while busi­ness­es ben­e­fit from be­ing clos­er to their cus­tomers and po­ten­tial em­ploy­ees.,” she ex­plained.

Attzs em­pha­sised that true eco­nom­ic progress must look be­yond the sheer num­ber of new plazas.

“As these com­mer­cial hubs con­tin­ue to grow, they should al­so be sup­port­ed by ful­ly func­tion­al, de­cen­tralised gov­ern­ment ser­vices, mak­ing it eas­i­er for cit­i­zens to ac­cess pub­lic ser­vices clos­er to home while re­duc­ing un­nec­es­sary trav­el in­to the al­ready con­gest­ed cap­i­tal,” she fur

“We al­so should be mind­ful of the se­cu­ri­ty di­men­sion. As these com­mer­cial hubs grow, we must en­sure that crime and in­se­cu­ri­ty do not de­ter in­vest­ment or dis­cour­age cit­i­zens from shop­ping, din­ing and ac­cess­ing ser­vices with­in their com­mu­ni­ties,” she fur­ther ad­vised.

Be­yond pub­lic safe­ty, the eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion of these emerg­ing hubs re­quires care­ful cal­i­bra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing mi­cro, small, and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

Attzs ar­gues that the pri­ma­ry chal­lenge fac­ing the lo­cal MSME sec­tor is mov­ing busi­ness­es along the de­vel­op­ment con­tin­u­um to­ward be­com­ing sus­tain­able, em­ploy­ing en­ti­ties. Tran­si­tion­ing these firms re­quires an en­abling busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment that im­proves ac­cess to fi­nance and dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems with­out bur­den­ing op­er­a­tors with ex­ces­sive bu­reau­cra­cy or fric­tion costs.

A crit­i­cal el­e­ment of this re­gion­al growth, ac­cord­ing to Attzs, in­volves eval­u­at­ing the qual­i­ty of em­ploy­ment gen­er­at­ed. While re­tail out­lets, restau­rants, and plazas cre­ate im­me­di­ate job op­por­tu­ni­ties, she stressed that the to­tal plaza count is an in­ad­e­quate bench­mark for re­al de­vel­op­ment. True progress re­quires ex­am­in­ing wage lev­els, job qual­i­ty and long-term ca­reer ad­vance­ment.

To max­imise eco­nom­ic re­silience, emerg­ing com­mer­cial cen­tres must di­ver­si­fy be­yond low-wage re­tail and ba­sic ser­vices.

Ide­al­ly, these hubs should ac­tive­ly at­tract tech­nol­o­gy firms. Attzs ad­vised fi­nan­cial and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, cre­ative in­dus­tries and light man­u­fac­tur­ing as high­er-pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in­dus­tries that en­able cit­i­zens to se­cure high-qual­i­ty, high-pay­ing jobs near their places of res­i­dence rather than re­ly­ing sole­ly on the cap­i­tal city for em­ploy­ment.

Attzs al­so high­light­ed a crit­i­cal macro-eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty: the for­eign ex­change di­men­sion. Many in­com­ing fran­chise op­er­a­tions, re­tail busi­ness­es, and food out­lets re­ly heav­i­ly on im­port­ed in­ven­to­ry and goods. While these busi­ness­es spur do­mes­tic em­ploy­ment, they si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly dri­ve up na­tion­al de­mand for for­eign ex­change through el­e­vat­ed im­port bills, fran­chise fees, roy­al­ties and prof­it repa­tri­a­tions.

Rather than dis­cour­ag­ing in­vest­ment in re­gion­al com­mer­cial cen­tres, Attzs con­tends that this for­eign ex­change dy­nam­ic should serve as a cat­a­lyst to boost sup­port for do­mes­tic en­tre­pre­neurs. Ex­pand­ing the range of lo­cal­ly pro­duced goods and ser­vices will al­low the na­tion to max­i­mize lo­cal eco­nom­ic val­ue while mit­i­gat­ing long-term strain on for­eign cur­ren­cy re­serves.

Re­al es­tate re­al­i­ties

Pro­vid­ing a re­al es­tate and fi­nan­cial per­spec­tive, Jean-Paul de Meil­lac, CEO of Ter­ra Caribbean, con­firmed that com­mer­cial re­al es­tate eco­nom­ics heav­i­ly favour de­vel­op­ment out­side the cap­i­tal.

Analysing the fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of con­struc­tion, de Meil­lac ex­plained that build­ing tra­di­tion­al high-rise com­mer­cial of­fice build­ings in Port-of-Spain no longer makes fi­nan­cial sense.

“Due to the cost of con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, and again the bu­reau­cra­cy, it doesn’t make fi­nan­cial sense to build an of­fice build­ing and rent it in this en­vi­ron­ment,” de Meil­lac stat­ed adding, “Where­as, with a plaza, when you are the de­vel­op­er and the an­chor ten­ant... and you’ve got a fol­low­ing of like ten­ants from each of your plazas. You can build af­ford­abil­i­ty and have a ten­ant base and have an in­come to pay back on your in­vest­ment in the short term.”

From a cost and land avail­abil­i­ty stand­point, de Meil­lac em­pha­sised the stark con­trasts be­tween the cap­i­tal and ex­pand­ing east­ern dis­tricts.

“It is more fi­nan­cial­ly fea­si­ble be­cause the labour pool is bet­ter...What the re­al ben­e­fit, though, is when you build a sin­gle-storey prop­er­ty or a two-storey prop­er­ty, it’s spread over a large piece of land that you may have ac­quired cheap­er. The land is cheap­er out­side of Port-of-Spain. You can build for cheap­er than if you buy an ex­pen­sive piece of land in Port-of-Spain and you’re forced to go up five, six, sev­en storeys.”

On se­cur­ing large acreage in the cap­i­tal, he added, “You can’t get it in Port-of-Spain. You can’t get... a 10-acre piece in Port-of-Spain at all. If you were to find it, it would be a frac­tion of that size and it would be 200 per cent to 300 per cent more pricey.”

Gat­ed malls vs de­clin­ing cities

Adding cru­cial con­text to the se­vere chal­lenges fac­ing tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial dis­tricts, Gre­go­ry Aboud, pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), stat­ed that the pres­sure from sub­ur­ban com­mer­cial plazas is hit­ting every town and city across Trinidad.

“It is not just Port-of-Spain that is feel­ing the pres­sure of sub­ur­ban shop­ping de­vel­op­ment,” Aboud de­clared, as he ex­plained, “All of the towns and cities, every last one of them, is un­der pres­sure be­cause pri­vate ex­ter­nal de­vel­op­ments in closed shop­ping malls can cre­ate con­di­tions for the con­sumer that Port-of-Spain busi­ness­es can­not cre­ate. That’s sim­ply be­cause be­hind the walls and fences of these shop­ping cen­tres, the own­ers are in con­trol of the en­vi­ron­ment that the cus­tomer is be­ing wel­comed to, where­as the en­vi­ron­ment of the towns and cities is out of the con­trol of the busi­ness peo­ple who op­er­ate in those towns and cities.”

Con­se­quent­ly, shop­pers nat­u­ral­ly grav­i­tate to­ward the has­sle-free, gat­ed en­vi­ron­ment of­fered by shop­ping com­plex­es.

He not­ed that this trend is not iso­lat­ed to the east but is ac­tive­ly un­fold­ing across Cen­tral and South Trinidad, cit­ing suc­cess­ful pri­vate projects like Brent­wood Plaza along­side South Park, C3 Cen­tre and Gulf City Mall.

Aboud em­pha­sised that mu­nic­i­pal in­ac­tion on se­cu­ri­ty, clean­li­ness and or­der di­rect­ly dri­ves con­sumers in­to gat­ed com­mer­cial cen­tres.

“The towns and cities are in many cas­es man­aged in a way to cre­ate some sort of so­cial com­pact in which ac­tiv­i­ties are al­lowed which would not be al­lowed be­hind fences and gates, in which is­sues like se­cu­ri­ty, clean­li­ness, home­less­ness vend­ing would not be tol­er­at­ed be­hind fences and gates,” Aboud said adding that there­fore, the cus­tomer is en­ti­tled to a has­sle-free, friend­ly en­vi­ron­ment that is safe, clean and con­ve­nient.

Cap­i­tal flight

High­light­ing the stark con­trast in cap­i­tal in­vest­ment be­tween tra­di­tion­al streets and pri­vate de­vel­op­ments, Aboud ob­served, “No ex­pan­sion is tak­ing place on the main road in Ch­agua­nas or on High Street in San Fer­nan­do or on Fred­er­ick Street in Port-of-Spain, and the rea­sons for that are very sim­ple. Cap­i­tal is be­ing al­lo­cat­ed in ar­eas where the cus­tomer base is re­spond­ing to that al­lo­ca­tion... As a re­sult of that, the trend is con­tin­u­ing to de­vel­op a weak­en­ing of towns and cities.”

To re­verse the on­go­ing de­cline of tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial cen­tres, Aboud called on mu­nic­i­pal and na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies to step up and en­force rules, safe­ty, and or­der. He cau­tioned that with­out de­ci­sive state ac­tion, towns and cities will face a con­tin­ued ex­o­dus of in­vest­ment and busi­ness peo­ple.

Ad­dress­ing the im­me­di­ate plight of Port-of-Spain, Aboud re­newed DO­MA’s pub­lic ap­peal for an or­gan­ised park­ing pro­gramme, warn­ing that preda­to­ry, cash-on­ly car wreck­ing op­er­a­tions in Wood­brook, St James and down­town are dri­ving con­sumers away and bring­ing cap­i­tal city busi­ness­es to their knees.