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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Chamber head calls for talks on project

by

20140108

The pro­posed $900 mil­lion re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Cen­tre City Mall in Ch­agua­nas is al­ready caus­ing rip­ples in the cen­tral bor­ough.Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Boodan says it's part of the Gov­ern­ment's over­all 4Cs Growth Pole de­vel­op­ment plan for the bor­ough and with the com­ple­men­tary works need­ed to ac­com­mo­date it, the project will even­tu­al­ly cost $1.1 bil­lion over­all.

But new­ly-elect­ed Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent, Rishi Sookhai, yes­ter­day called for con­sul­ta­tion on the mega project, which is the brain­child of the George Aboud & Sons Ltd (GASL) group of com­pa­nies.Sookhai, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian by phone, said the an­nounce­ment of the bil­lion-dol­lar project took him by sur­prise when he at­tend­ed Plan­ning Min­istry's pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed Im­ple­men­ta­tion Strat­e­gy for the 4Cs Growth Pole in Cou­va yes­ter­day.

"This was the first time I heard of this," he said.Yes­ter­day, GASL land de­vel­op­er and con­sul­tant, Dr An­tho­ny Fi­fi, un­veiled the 400,000 square-ft project at the con­sul­ta­tion at the Cou­va Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce in Cou­va. He boast­ed that the mall would be the "most mod­ern" in the coun­try and would cre­ate 2,000 jobs dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase, fea­ture 300 busi­ness­es and pro­vide 1,000 per­ma­nent jobs when com­plet­ed.

Sookhai said yes­ter­day that he wel­comed the project, but ad­mit­ted he had reser­va­tions giv­en the cur­rent traf­fic con­ges­tion in Ch­agua­nas."The idea is a world-class idea, but the im­ple­men­ta­tion of it is where we all have to come to­geth­er if we want to see it done. We have to come to­geth­er," he said.He said while the mega­mall would bring an in­flow of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment to Ch­agua­nas, they had to ad­mit that "our in­fra­struc­ture in terms of traf­fic is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able as it is in the cur­rent po­si­tion."

At yes­ter­day's con­sul­ta­tion it was al­so an­nounced that six more ETek parks will be built in Ch­agua­nas.Sookhai said cou­pled with those projects, the UWI open cam­pus and the mega­mall, the ques­tion was how they would deal with the traf­fic is­sue that will be cre­at­ed.Boodan said he too wel­comed all de­vel­op­ment in the cen­tral bor­ough.

He said the mall has been in the works for the last four years and was ini­ti­at­ed un­der for­mer may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar. He said the mall is part of a to­tal de­vel­op­ment plan for Ch­agua­nas, in­clud­ing an up­grad­ed road net­work and new en­trances and ex­its in­to and out the cen­tral bor­ough."It will not be iso­lat­ed, it will flow in­to a whole to­tal de­vel­op­ment plan," he as­sured.He agreed there should be con­sul­ta­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with the ven­dors who are cur­rent­ly housed at the old Ch­agua­nas health cen­tre com­pound.

He said that on Fri­day he will be hold­ing the first of a se­ries of con­sul­ta­tions with all stake­hold­ers on the project and the de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion."I am go­ing to en­gage all the stake­hold­ers in dis­cus­sion," Boodan said."That is my ap­proach, a bot­tom-up ap­proach and hear the views, ideas, opin­ions, sug­ges­tions and even the crit­i­cism of the peo­ple al­so, as to how we should move for­ward. We need to deal with the traf­fic and will be start­ing the first lev­el of con­sul­ta­tion with peo­ple on Fri­day."

Boodan al­so added that he will re­vis­it the whole traf­fic de­vel­op­ment plan for Ch­agua­nas, which he ad­mit­ted is a "work in progress."


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