Kali­fa Clyne

Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er has asked the Na­tion­al Trust to work with him to fast-track the restora­tion of Pres­i­dent's House and the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en. Vel Lewis, chair­man of the trust, said this last week in a tele­phone in­ter­view. The Na­tion­al Trust works in an ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty to over­see the preser­va­tion of her­itage build­ings and sites in the coun­try.

While the trust does not con­trol bud­gets or make fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions in re­la­tion to restora­tion or ren­o­va­tions of these build­ings, its man­date is to over­see and ad­vise the Gov­ern­ment on these sites. The min­istry re­spon­si­ble is the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. The Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en are his­toric build­ings known for their Eu­ro­pean-style ar­chi­tec­ture, built in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry along Queen's Park West, Port-of-Spain.

Over the past sev­er­al years, some have been al­lowed to fall in­to dis­re­pair, with Mille Fleurs reach­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly di­lap­i­dat­ed state. Four of the build­ings-White­hall, Mille Fleurs, Queen's Roy­al Col­lege and Stollmey­er's Cas­tle-are owned by the State. The oth­er three-Arch­bish­op's House, Roomor and Hayes Court-are pri­vate­ly owned.

Lewis said the trust had been en­cour­ag­ing the pri­vate own­ers to re­spond to calls from con­cerned cit­i­zens about the state of the build­ings. He said the Arch­bish­op's res­i­dence and Roomor had been paint­ed and un­der­gone some ren­o­va­tions re­cent­ly. He said the Gov­ern­ment had al­ready be­gun work on the build­ings un­der its con­trol and had fin­ished ren­o­va­tions on Queen's Roy­al Col­lege.

Lewis said al­though work had not be­gun on White­hall, de­mo­li­tion and sta­bil­i­sa­tion had be­gun on the oth­er two build­ings, Mille Fleurs and Stollmey­er's Cas­tle. He al­so said sta­bil­i­sa­tion work had been com­plet­ed on Pres­i­dent's House. "Over $1 mil­lion has al­ready been spent on the sta­bil­i­sa­tion of Mille Fleurs," said Lewis. He said the rough es­ti­mate was $32 mil­lion, but the fig­ure may go up, be­cause work on the build­ing had not been start­ed on time.

Lewis said the Na­tion­al Trust had pro­posed to use Mille Fleurs as its of­fice and as a mu­se­um-con­struc­tion de­signs for the build­ing in­clud­ed the sta­bles be­ing con­vert­ed in­to of­fice space. He said the main roof at Stollmey­er's Cas­tle was 55 per cent com­plete, the ve­ran­dah had been re­placed, and the build­ing had been treat­ed for ter­mites.

Lewis said the restora­tion work was de­signed to main­tain the coun­try's his­toric ar­chi­tec­ture. "We have done a draft pro­pos­al for a his­toric preser­va­tion fund so that peo­ple who owned his­toric prop­er­ties could ap­ply to the fund for as­sis­tance." He added that on­ly prop­er­ties list­ed as her­itage prop­er­ties with the Na­tion­al Trust would re­ceive as­sis­tance.

He said he ex­pect­ed the fund would be set up in the new fis­cal year. The pro­pos­al for the fund it­self was a re­sult of calls from con­cerned cit­i­zens as well as the in­ter­est group Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion. In an in­ter­view last week, Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion chair­man Rudy­lynn Roberts said in de­vel­oped coun­tries like Eng­land and the Unit­ed States, fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance was avail­able for pri­vate own­ers of his­toric build­ings.

She said at present, the Gov­ern­ment was not do­ing enough when it came to preser­va­tion of these build­ings. "What must be un­der­stood is that these peo­ple are pre­serv­ing these build­ings not for them­selves, but for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions," Roberts said. "These build­ings are an ex­am­ple of his­to­ry that we can touch, in con­trast to what we see or read about."

She said if the Gov­ern­ment did not move quick­ly to re­store the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, they would be­come di­lap­i­dat­ed and would cost even more to fix. "Look at Pres­i­dent's House...What­ev­er the cost was when it col­lapsed, it will now cost more tax­pay­ers' dol­lars to fix," she said. "Af­ter two rainy sea­sons and two dry sea­sons that have been rel­a­tive­ly wet, it is go­ing to be more cost­ly to re­store."

Roberts said the coun­try need­ed to give greater pri­or­i­ty to main­tain­ing these build­ings rather than wait­ing for them to fall down. "In pre­serv­ing these build­ings, we are al­so pre­serv­ing the craft and skills of by­gone gen­er­a­tions of our peo­ple," she said. "Some­one's grand­fa­thers' fa­ther paint­ed those build­ings and did the work on them."

Roberts said she had seen paint­ing on the Arch­bish­op's house, but could not re­call any vis­i­ble ren­o­va­tions to the oth­er build­ings. Lewis said no time­line, con­struc­tion pe­ri­od or dead­line had been put in place for the build­ings. Warn­er said last year that the restora­tion of Pres­i­dent's House would be com­plet­ed by the end of 2013 and would cost $4.5 mil­lion.

Since the roof col­lapsed in May 2010, T&T Pres­i­dent George Richards has not used the build­ing, but has held of­fi­cial func­tions at Knowsley, for­mer­ly used by the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs.