Kali­fa Clyne

The con­struc­tion of a 100-room ho­tel has be­come a le­gal mat­ter in­volv­ing the City of Port-of-Spain forc­ing Wood­brook res­i­dents be­tween a rock and a hard place. This was the rev­e­la­tion made by Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing as he ad­dressed a crowd dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the Wood­brook com­mu­ni­ty's 100th an­niver­sary on Tues­day night at Jaf­fa Restau­rant, Wood­brook. Lee Sing de­clined to delve fur­ther in­to the is­sue but ad­vised res­i­dents to find a way to man­age the change tak­ing place rapid­ly around them. Last year, Wood­brook coun­cil­lor Cleve­land Gar­cia had high­light­ed the con­cerns and ob­jec­tions of res­i­dents to the con­struc­tion of a ho­tel. He had re­vealed that in ad­di­tion to the ho­tel a few bars and two for­eign fran­chis­es, Wendy's and Hard Rock Cafe had made re­quests to build.

Thus far Wendy's has con­struct­ed a restau­rant on Ari­api­ta Av­enue. Lee Sing said com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion was mov­ing ag­gres­sive­ly in Wood­brook and res­i­dents should do all in their pow­er to en­sure that the trans­for­ma­tion was ac­cord­ing to their wish­es. Busi­ness­man Arthur Lok Jack, in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress told res­i­dents that change was in­evitable but it was up to them to en­sure that it was done prop­er­ly. He said it was time to tear down some of the old­er struc­tures in Port-of-Spain and re­build so that busi­ness­es would have more op­tions for lo­ca­tion of their of­fices. Tues­day's cel­e­bra­tion marked the 100th an­niver­sary of the hand­ing over of the Siegert es­tate, now Wood­brook, to the Town Board. Since 1911, the then 367 acre sug­ar es­tate has been trans­formed in­to a res­i­den­tial area and en­ter­tain­ment hot spot, with Ari­api­ta Av­enue be­ing home to var­i­ous bars, restau­rants and re­tail out­lets.