Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

With­in the next six months, San Fer­nan­do will see the start of con­struc­tion of a 120-room Hilton ho­tel at South Park.

The project was an­nounced by chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Ra­hael Hold­ings Ltd (RHL) Group of Com­pa­nies, An­tho­ny Ra­hael, dur­ing a meet­ing with San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo at the San Fer­nan­do City Hall.

"We are in­tro­duc­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed ho­tel, we are in dis­cus­sions with the Hilton brand and we have an agree­ment in place, so hope­ful­ly in the near fu­ture we will be break­ing ground to build a new ho­tel, a Hilton-type ho­tel," Ra­hael said.

"It will prob­a­bly be a Hamp­ton Inn by Hilton that would be com­ing to San Fer­nan­do, and keep in mind this is the first in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed ho­tel in San Fer­nan­do."

Hamp­ton by Hilton, for­mer­ly known as Hamp­ton Inn, is a brand of mo­tels trade­marked by Hilton World­wide. The Hamp­ton ho­tel brand is a chain of mod­er­ate­ly priced, mid­scale ho­tels with lim­it­ed food and bev­er­age fa­cil­i­ties.

Ra­hael said the South Park ho­tel will be built close to the mall on a two-acre piece of land and will be com­plete with con­fer­ence rooms and all ameni­ties.

This project will be the sec­ond in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel for the coun­try, as the San­dals Group has an­nounced its in­ten­tion to build a 750-room ho­tel at No Man's Land, To­ba­go.

That project has been marred with con­tro­ver­sy as there have been en­vi­ron­men­tal con­cerns raised over the use of No Man's Land.

Dur­ing a meet­ing on Sun­day in To­ba­go, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley once more threw his sup­port be­hind the project, say­ing it is a very im­por­tant one for the is­land and it would bring tourism on the is­land in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The San­dals project is ex­pect­ed to em­ploy thou­sands dur­ing the con­struc­tion pe­ri­od and in the course of it's op­er­a­tions.

Ra­hael said yes­ter­day the South Park ho­tel will al­so cre­ate jobs in San Fer­nan­do.

"The staffing of the ho­tel is go­ing to 100 per cent lo­cal and when I say lo­cal I mean San Fer­nan­do lo­cals as the case with most of the ten­ants we have now (at South Park.) Dur­ing the con­struc­tion pe­ri­od, you'll prob­a­bly have about 150 peo­ple em­ployed and af­ter the con­struc­tion pe­ri­od, the staff mem­bers should range from 50 to 60 peo­ple."

Ra­hael said while he could not say yet what the ho­tel might cost, the pre­lim­i­nary de­signs have al­ready been com­plet­ed.

"We have de­sign­ers in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hilton, the pre­lim­i­nary de­sign is al­ready done, we just now need to fi­nal­ize the de­signs and get the nec­es­sary fi­nances."

He said once the con­struc­tion be­gins, it is ex­pect­ed to last ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 months.

He al­so an­nounced that the com­pa­ny would be­gin dis­cus­sions on cre­at­ing a res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ty on an­oth­er two-acre plot of land close to South Park. He said that project would be tar­get­ing mid­dle-in­come earn­ers.

Re­grel­lo praised him for the ini­tia­tives, say­ing South Park has al­ready con­tributed vast­ly to San Fer­nan­do and pledg­ing the sup­port of the city cor­po­ra­tion.