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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Millions more needed to update Chag Boardwalk

by

20160226

In ex­cess of $40 mil­lion has al­ready been spent on the de­vel­op­ment of the Ch­aguara­mas Board­walk project, how­ev­er, mil­lions more are need­ed to fix the prob­lems the de­vel­op­ment is fac­ing.

This was dis­closed to the T&T Guardian by chair­man of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA), An­tho­ny Pierre dur­ing a tour of the fa­cil­i­ties on Wednes­day.

Pierre said all phas­es of the de­vel­op­ment project would be com­plet­ed but ad­mit­ted that this year would be a year of con­sol­i­da­tion.

"The project works that are cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en con­tin­ued but we do not plan to im­ple­ment any new projects just yet. We have to have time to sit down and make prop­er eval­u­a­tions as to where we are and where we need to go.

"This year will be a year of con­sol­i­da­tion where we will try to fix what we have and con­tin­ue the ground works. Maybe in 2017 we will look at what else could be done," Pierre said.

Some food ven­dors at the fa­cil­i­ty have lodged com­plaints over the past few months and Pierre was shown some of the ex­ist­ing prob­lems, in­clud­ing lack of a prop­er wa­ter sup­ply, elec­tri­cal is­sues, con­struc­tion, struc­tur­al and in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

One of the ven­dors, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said they paid be­tween $5,000 to $10,000 in month­ly rental fees and added that for that price their ser­vices were not prop­er­ly mar­ket­ed to vis­i­tors to the area.

"Some of us can­not open every­day and have to de­pend on week­end sales on­ly but hard­ly any­one knows that we sell food here. We need a nice seat­ing area with um­brel­las where peo­ple can come and buy the food and sit and eat. There need to be signs placed in the busiest parts of the board­walk so peo­ple would be aware that there are a va­ri­ety of food avail­able, in­clud­ing grill and cur­ry," the ven­dor said.

"We need a prop­er light­ing sys­tem so that peo­ple could feel free to come at late evenings in­to the night. We al­so need heavy se­cu­ri­ty in the area, in­clud­ing af­ter hours, when we all are locked up and gone," the ven­dor added.

An­oth­er ten­ant, Videsh Beecham, Mi­ni Of­froad May­hem (Re­mote con­trol cars track), who al­so met with Pierre, said he re­mained hope­ful as he was pleased with some of the lu­cra­tive promis­es made by the CDA's chair­man.

Pierre as­sured the ven­dors that im­me­di­ate ac­tion would be tak­en to try to rem­e­dy some of the is­sues while oth­er re­me­di­al works would take place with­in a six-month to a year pe­ri­od.

"This area has a lot of po­ten­tial. If prop­er­ly done and man­aged it could be a gem, both for the CDA and the peo­ple of T&T.

"We will try to do that from the ven­dors per­spec­tive be­cause they have in­vest­ed monies in their small busi­ness­es and we will want to sup­port them in giv­ing them every pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty to suc­ceed in their busi­ness­es," Pierre said.

By Au­gust, the mi­ni golf area and wa­ter park is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed and soon af­ter, the restau­rant.

While there on Wednes­day, the T&T Guardian met with some for­eign­ers, who de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as awe­some.

Mar­ried cou­ple Clement and Jan­ice Bak­er, of Brook­lyn, New York, who both vis­it­ed the board­walk for the first time could not stop talk­ing about how much they were en­joy­ing the unique­ness of the de­vel­op­ment.

"It is just re­fresh­ing. I am glad I can sit here and just en­joy the sea breeze," Clement said.

An­oth­er vis­i­tor, Trinidad-born Sel­wyn Au­gus­tine, who al­so re­sides in New York, said he had re­turned to T&T af­ter 40 years and was shocked to see how much Ch­aguara­mas has de­vel­oped.


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