DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The ven­dors at Port-of-Spain’s icon­ic Break­fast Shed have not been evict­ed and were nev­er for­mal­ly served no­tices, Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) chair­man Shankar Bidaisee said yes­ter­day, even as the fa­cil­i­ty re­mains closed and locked up.

“For the record, we nev­er is­sued an evic­tion no­tice. They just left with­out telling us,” he told Guardian Me­dia, fram­ing the clo­sure as a mat­ter of un­paid rent rather than forced re­moval.

Bidaisee said the ven­dors owe near­ly $2 mil­lion in ar­rears, pri­mar­i­ly for rent.

“We just need­ed the mon­ey. If peo­ple were pay­ing their rent, we wouldn’t have any is­sues,” he said, em­pha­sis­ing that his role at Ude­cott is to curb ex­pens­es and min­imise loss­es.

While no for­mal evic­tion was is­sued, man­age­ment de­mand­ed pay­ment, and Ude­cott has yet to de­cide whether a pay­ment plan will be of­fered.

“No, it’s $1.8 mil­lion. The rent is just about, just over $20,000. I can’t say in terms of pay­ment plan and so on.”

Yes­ter­day, the wa­ter­front land­mark, al­so called Femmes du Chalet, was qui­et. Met­al gates barred ac­cess to stalls stacked with emp­ty pots, garbage bags, and Sty­ro­foam con­tain­ers. Black­birds perched on va­cant ta­bles, while two se­cu­ri­ty guards pa­trolled the grounds.

A hand­ful of passers­by and of­fice work­ers who slipped away for a brief re­prieve sat on bench­es un­der the shed. They ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the clo­sure, not­ing they would have been en­joy­ing cool drinks at the bar while tak­ing in the ocean view.

Al­though one vis­i­tor re­flect­ed on the com­fort the fa­mil­iar shed pro­vid­ed, an­oth­er cit­ed oc­ca­sion­al dis­putes among staff as a de­ter­rent.

How­ev­er, re­tiree Se­bright Stephen, 79, spec­u­lat­ed that high booth rents may have con­tributed to the clo­sure.

“I would have no­ticed that things were not go­ing (well)... and I don’t know if that sort of price they had to pay would have re­sult­ed in the sit­u­a­tion now. They owe mon­ey be­cause there is a prime place. It has al­ways been—shed one right down to shed sev­en. The train used to run here, and the train­men used to come here and eat. Port men used to come here and eat. It was a gal­va­nized shed. And they (Ude­cott) beau­ti­fy it, they nice it up, they mod­ernise it, and I think that would have cost some mon­ey. So, the price they would have had to pay for these booths, to me, it was def­i­nite­ly high. I don’t know if the gov­ern­ment would have ever thought of sub­si­dis­ing them,” he said.

For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte, who briefly served on the board over­see­ing the shed’s re­con­struc­tion in the ear­ly 2000s, de­scribed the clo­sure as a cul­tur­al loss.

“The Break­fast Shed has nev­er been just a food court; it has been a cul­tur­al land­mark, a place where lo­cal cui­sine was ac­ces­si­ble and af­ford­able, where the soul of our na­tion was plat­ed dai­ly in crab and dumpling, coo-coo, stew fish, callaloo, and stewed chick­en,” he wrote in a let­ter to the ed­i­tor. Le Hunte called on the State and civ­il so­ci­ety to in­ter­vene, not­ing that ven­dors should have been guar­an­teed rent-free tenure af­ter be­ing dis­placed dur­ing con­struc­tion.

The clo­sure has sparked de­bate over the bal­ance be­tween fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions and pre­serv­ing a cher­ished in­sti­tu­tion.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, any per­son who is rent­ing space and that has to main­tain it is go­ing to re­quire that some pay­ment be made for the space,” said Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud.

“It usu­al­ly is the case in our lo­cal sit­u­a­tion that gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to rent every­thing and not col­lect the rent, and that has re­peat­ed it­self con­stant­ly. Con­stant­ly, you hear sto­ries about HDC rent not be­ing paid, no rent be­ing paid for the space in the Sa­van­nah that is be­ing used, and so on. And peo­ple are earn­ing an in­come from the space, so pre­sum­ably there is some rev­enue from which they can pay some rent,” he added.

Ude­cott is prepar­ing a re­port while dis­cus­sions about re­struc­tur­ing, rent re­lief, and new ten­an­cy agree­ments are on­go­ing.

“Ude­cott ob­vi­ous­ly has to do a mar­ket scan, and they will bring a pro­pos­al to the board for con­sid­er­a­tion,” Bidaisee said.

The Break­fast Shed was re­con­struct­ed in 2006 af­ter the orig­i­nal build­ing fell in­to dis­re­pair.