For years, two six-storey apart­ment build­ings stood aban­doned and des­o­late at Up­per Mendes Dri­ve, Champs Fleurs. The build­ings, now known as the St Georges Apart­ments are vis­i­ble to any­one look­ing north of the Uri­ah But­ler high­way, in the vicin­i­ty of Mount Hope med­ical com­plex. The rib­bon cut­ting was held last Sat­ur­day. The apart­ment com­plex was for­mer­ly known as Hevron Heights, whose de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny was em­broiled in a long le­gal dis­pute against Guardian As­set Man­age­ment (GAM), the sub­sidiary of West­moor­ings-based Guardian Hold­ings Ltd

The le­gal bat­tle be­tween the de­vel­op­ers, David and Leonara Deslau­ri­ers, and GAM stemmed from a $18.9 mil­lion loan re­ceived to fund the apart­ment de­vel­op­ment. 
The cou­ple claimed that when GAM failed to ad­vance them ad­di­tion­al funds to com­plete the de­vel­op­ment in 2009, they suf­fered $25 mil­lion in loss­es with the project still in­com­plete. 
In 2018, GAM placed the up­scale de­vel­op­ment for auc­tion in a bid to re­trieve the $40 mil­lion debt, but there were no tak­ers at the time. The courts then per­mit­ted GAM to sell the tow­ers, along with the Deslau­ri­ers’ prop­er­ty at Vic­to­ria Square, to clear the debt. 
Two years lat­er, the St Georges De­vel­op­ment Group bought the tow­ers from GAM and start­ed con­struc­tion in 2022. 
The first tow­er is al­most com­plete, and the en­tire project is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in the first quar­ter of 2025. 
George A Laquis II, man­ag­ing part­ner of the St Georges De­vel­op­ment Group, told Busi­ness Guardian the com­pa­ny spent over $100 mil­lion on the project. The new de­vel­op­er’s bankers are the First Cit­i­zens Group.  
Laquis said the com­pound fea­tures 38 three-bed­room apart­ments, each 1,800 square feet in size, and two pent­house units, each cov­er­ing 3,600 square feet over two floors. 
He di­vulged that the units will start at $3.2 mil­lion and the ameni­ties in­clude cen­tral air con­di­tion­ing, high-end plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal fix­tures, card ac­cess, in­ter­com com­mu­ni­ca­tion, a swim­ming pool, a club­house, a fit­ness cen­tre, and rooftop gar­dens. 
Laquis not­ed that the in­fra­struc­ture in­cludes over 40,000 gal­lons of wa­ter stor­age, fire pumps, and sprin­kler sys­tems for both com­mon ar­eas and in­di­vid­ual units, en­sur­ing safe­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty. 
“One im­por­tant as­pect of this project that we want to high­light is our de­ci­sion to avoid pre-sell­ing any units un­til we reach a stage where po­ten­tial home­own­ers could tru­ly en­vi­sion them­selves liv­ing here. Based on the past his­to­ry of this de­vel­op­ment, we felt it was cru­cial to en­sure that the con­struc­tion was well ad­vanced be­fore our pre-sales launch. This ap­proach was es­sen­tial to give our buy­ers con­fi­dence that they are in­vest­ing in a project that will be com­plet­ed suc­cess­ful­ly,” Laquis said.

He called for the stream­lin­ing of the ap­proval process for sim­i­lar de­vel­op­ments. 
“Re­duc­ing de­lays and bu­reau­cra­cy would not on­ly be ben­e­fi­cial to de­vel­op­ers and po­ten­tial own­ers but would al­so help mit­i­gate the cost and time as­so­ci­at­ed with nav­i­gat­ing the cur­rent ap­proval en­vi­ron­ment,” the prop­er­ty de­vel­op­er said. 
He stat­ed that agents were ex­pect­ed to be in­vit­ed on Wednes­day to view the units, and this Sat­ur­day and Sun­day there will be an open house for reg­is­tered mem­bers of the pub­lic. 

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“Due to the his­to­ry of the project, be­ing stalled in 2009 with the pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­er, we chose to get the project to a cer­tain point of con­struc­tion with the mod­el units so peo­ple could see what the liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence would be like, along with the lev­el of com­fort when they put their de­posits down to own their new home.”
Asked what the gen­er­al in­ter­est was like to pur­chase the units, the de­vel­op­er said there is a long list of peo­ple who are ex­pect­ed to vis­it. 

“This project re­flects our com­mit­ment to qual­i­ty, in­no­va­tion, and ex­cel­lence. We’ve col­lab­o­rat­ed with top ar­chi­tects, de­sign­ers, and crafts­men to cre­ate homes that ex­ceed the high­est ex­pec­ta­tions. The St. Georges Apart­ments blend lux­u­ry with na­ture, of­fer­ing a serene es­cape from the hus­tle and bus­tle of city life.”

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Prop­er­ty safe  

With crime be­ing a ma­jor prob­lem in the coun­try, Laquis said the com­pound has gat­ed ac­cess with 24-hour se­cu­ri­ty, CCTV cam­eras, on-site pa­trol, and se­cu­ri­ty fenc­ing around the en­tire com­pound. 
“We’re go­ing to be ex­treme­ly well-lit on our road­ways and lead­ing up to our de­vel­op­ment, as well as se­cure park­ing. We have been up here now for about two years and there have been no is­sues. The neigh­bours, the res­i­dents liv­ing here from the  bot­tom of Mendes Dri­ve to the top, have not re­port­ed any crime prob­lem. 
It’s a nice neigh­bour­hood and I think the peo­ple who end up here will al­so be very safe and se­cure,” Laquis said.

Oth­er projects  

Speak­ing on oth­er achieve­ments, Laquis said the group has com­plet­ed sig­nif­i­cant projects such as Man­dalay Gar­dens, a 55-acre gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty in Ari­ma with 176 res­i­den­tial lots; The Vil­lages at Man­dalay, a neigh­bour­hood shop­ping cen­tre an­chored by Massy Stores; and Chateau de Chan­til­ly, fea­tur­ing 16 ex­ec­u­tive town­hous­es in the heart of Fair­ways, Mar­aval. 
Look­ing ahead, he said the com­pa­ny is ex­cit­ed about the up­com­ing ven­tures.  
“We are cur­rent­ly in the process of tak­ing over the bpTT com­plex in Ma­yaro, soon to be known as CBRY-Z Re­sorts, a nine-acre bou­tique beach re­sort—where we plan to re­vi­tal­ize the area, ini­tial­ly of­fer­ing full ac­com­mo­da­tion to en­er­gy sec­tor em­ploy­ees.” 
Al­so, he said con­struc­tion will soon be­gin on 80 apart­ments and 10 town­hous­es at Man­dalay Gar­dens, Ari­ma. The de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny al­so ex­pects to start con­struc­tion on the Cor­ner Stone Suites—a new res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment set to re­vi­tal­ize Stone Street in Port of Spain as well as a com­mer­cial project on 4.75 acres of land at the Aranguez South round­about, called the Amalguez Cor­po­rate Park. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a 60-room brand­ed ho­tel is com­ing soon to Mar­aval. 
This project Laquis high­light­ed rep­re­sents an in­vest­ment of over $100 mil­lion, un­der­scor­ing the Group’s com­mit­ment to in­vest­ing in T&T with con­fi­dence and con­tribut­ing to its growth and de­vel­op­ment.