On Thursday, Minister of Tourism Dr Rupert Griffith announced that the Government would spend $13 million to develop Ariapita Avenue, Woodbrook, into a prime tourist location. Even to his audience, the members of Lions International assembled for their 32nd Multiple District Convention, this must have sounded like a startlingly high figure to spend on a social phenomenon that has proceeded vigorously without any supportive intervention from the Government.
The major issues that have come to the public sector from the organic but rapid growth of restaurants, watering holes and hangouts along the strip, now described in far more hip terms as "The Avenue," have tended to be complaints, most of them directed at the Mayor of Port-of-Spain.
Now the Ministry of Tourism seems to be planning to leverage this private sector initiative into a more formal tourist trap, evolving the avenue into a venue, as it were. This "beautification" exercise, as Minister Griffith described it, might have seemed to be gilding the lily just a few years ago.
Now those residents of Woodbrook who have declared themselves harassed by the influx of limers, long lines of cars seeking a parking spot and a liberal sprinkling of urine by hard drinkers unconcerned with niceties like bathrooms, must be wondering what's in this package for them.
In planning any intervention in Woodbrook, the Government should be mindful of the long history of the city suburb, which celebrated its 100th anniversary as a part of Port-of-Spain in 2011 after it was sold to the Town Board by the Siegert family. The history of Woodbrook is inextricably tied to its evolution from a province of the rich to a settlement for an urban middle-class appreciative of its proximity to the city's capital.
The Woodbrook of today is returning to its commercial roots, but the product this time around isn't sugar, it's the sweetness of the local lime, distilled over decades of social evolution. Residents may be upset about bad parking, the lingering stink and the debris of enthusiastic partying, but they are, at core, far more worried about the erosion of their way of life.
That's why they complain to the EMA about noise levels, why they pester the mayor so vigorously and why they greet new proposals to change in their neighbourhoods with such militant suspicion. In November, 2011, at an event celebrating the 100th anniversary of the former estate, Mayor Louis Lee Sing told a distinctly unappreciative audience that the commercialisation of their community would only accelerate.
In addition to a proposed 100-room hotel, the mayor noted that both Wendy's and the Hard Rock Cafe had expressed an interest in building in Woodbrook. Change is constant, and in the 21st century, rapid and relentless as well. In less than a decade, Woodbrook has changed from a residential district with some commerce in its most highly trafficked areas into a city suburb into which business interests are surging along the arteries of traffic flow, following the congregations of the public and siting their businesses where their customers are.
This isn't a process that's going to be stopped or even slowed by regulation or zoning. Any Government intervention in the development of Woodbrook should concentrate on proper analysis of the existing situation and implement proper city planning to bring relief to residents; satisfaction to an engaged public and opportunities to a private sector eager to spend money on new projects.
It's failures in monitoring by Town and Country Planning and lax enforcement of regulations that's led to the worst problems in Woodbrook today. Before considering beautification, Minister Griffith should focus on infrastructural improvements that blend into the style of the community, such as improved parking. Before we do pretty, Woodbrook needs practical.