Raphael John-Lall

Derek Chin, chair­man of the three Movi­eTowne cine­plex­es, is work­ing on an­oth­er mega project: Streets of the World. "If you thought Movi­eTowne was great, this will be greater. My next project is worth $1 bil­lion. The mon­ey is avail­able and I am ready to go. This is be­hind Movi­eTowne in In­vaders Bay where 80 acres of land is avail­able. We will take the cul­ture of a coun­try and make streets out of them." Chin an­nounced his next bil­lion-dol­lar project on June 22 at the Fourth Bi­en­ni­al In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Busi­ness, Bank­ing and Fi­nance at the Hilton Trinidad ho­tel, St Ann's. Chin gave more de­tails at a fol­low-up in­ter­view on Mon­day at the Wood­brook of­fice of his com­pa­ny, Tele­com Sys­tems (Trinidad) Ltd.

Al­though he orig­i­nal­ly bud­get­ed the project to be less than $1 bil­lion, the even­tu­al cost will be much more. "We did the pre­lim­i­nary bud­get and the first bud­get came up to $780 mil­lion, but it's go­ing way past that." Chin gave a break­down of the bud­get. "We get ap­proval for the lands. Then we have the in­fra­struc­ture works, the drainage, the sew­er­age, the un­der­ground lines, elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions and util­i­ties. The in­fra­struc­ture works could cost a cou­ple hun­dred mil­lion." Add to those cost items plan­ning and build­ing. "As­sum­ing the build­ing is $1,200 per square feet, we have to come up with how many hun­dred thou­sand square feet it is and we mul­ti­ply it by the $1,200 square feet. That could be a bud­get of $500 mil­lion. We are talk­ing about build­ing a city, af­ter all."

The em­ploy­ment ben­e­fits will be huge, said Chin, ever the en­tre­pre­neur, who on­ly on June 29 for­mal­ly opened Texas de Brazile at Fi­es­ta Plaza, Movi­eTowne, Au­drey Jef­fers High­way. This restau­rant and Ru­by Tues­day are owned by the fam­i­ly com­pa­ny, Da Chin En­ter­pris­es. "I think we will gen­er­ate 10,000 plus in di­rect em­ploy­ment. The con­struc­tion is go­ing to be mas­sive," he said. Chin is con­sid­er­ing all fi­nanc­ing op­tions. "Right now, we are look­ing at float­ing a bond to seek the fund­ing to do oth­er things. There are for­eign in­vestors who like the idea and are will­ing to come to T&T and un­der­write it. Some of them want to build the whole thing and just rent it out, but I don't want to give up the lo­cal part of it."

He is con­sid­er­ing one se­ri­ous in­vestor from Venezuela who will pro­vide fund­ing for the project.

"At this time, I won't give the name of this po­ten­tial in­vestor." Venezuela is well known for the con­struc­tion of huge malls. For in­stance, the five-lev­el Sam­bil Mall in Cara­cas, Venezuela, is the fourth largest mall in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Streets of the World

Derek Chin wants to take cul­tures from around the world and cre­ate a street af­ter them. "There would be a Street of Mum­bai, a Street of Hong Kong, a Street of the Mid­dle East, a Street of Africa, and so on. There would be a fash­ion street for women. There would be a mi­ni-car­ni­val street, which (Car­ni­val band­leader Bri­an) Mc­Far­lane would be in­volved in. These streets would be the­mat­ic streets." There would be ad­di­tion­al at­trac­tions, like horse and bug­gy. "Maybe from the (Queen's Park) Sa­van­nah through Wood­brook straight to the Streets of the World, tourists would trav­el on them."

Chin al­so has plans to de­vel­op a Car­ni­val mu­se­um. "In 2011, what have we done with Car­ni­val? We are still build­ing a Grand­stand in 2011. What is the lega­cy of Car­ni­val? The an­swer to that is noth­ing. Let's build a Car­ni­val mu­se­um in wax. Bring them out and show the world all the eras of Car­ni­val." He said a tourists com­ing off a ship could spend two hours and spend US$50 look­ing at T&T's Car­ni­val.

He wants the Streets of the World project to be an en­ter­tain­ment mec­ca that would draw tourists from all over. "We are go­ing to cre­ate this lit­tle mec­ca, so there would be Movi­eTowne, Streets of the World, Car­ni­val and every­thing else in one. We will take T&T and make it a great tourist des­ti­na­tion. "In the rest of the Caribbean, you see sail­ing, crick­et and oth­er things. Yet in T&T, we are not sell­ing the coun­try."

Bu­reau­cra­cy

Chin has met with the Prime Min­is­ter and many gov­ern­ment min­is­ters seek­ing ap­proval for this project.

Be­fore Christ­mas 2010, he had a meet­ing with the Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan, and oth­er min­is­ters, at the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice. They all sup­port­ed his plans. "I have been lob­by­ing the Gov­ern­ment for a year now, even be­fore the elec­tions. I sent in the pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es about the con­cept; I met 19 Cab­i­net min­is­ters over the last six months. The next min­is­ter I am meet­ing is Bhoe Tewarie, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning. He wants to see me. I al­so met with Jear­lean John, Ude­cott chair­man. She al­so loves it, but that was three to four months ago.

"So I con­tin­ue to de­vel­op in terms of the ar­chi­tec­ture, the fi­nan­cial as­pect, pro­vid­ing the prop­er mod­els, so it reach­es a stage when I make a for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion, it will be in a com­plet­ed form. Up to when I met the min­is­ters a few months ago, I was still de­vel­op­ing the plan." He even en­list­ed the help of Jim Gar­ber, an Amer­i­can ar­chi­tect de­sign­er, who has done work for Dis­ney World. Gar­ber came to T&T last week Tues­day to help Chin en­hance some of the plans for Streets of the World. "I have spent about $2.5 mil­lion so far in get­ting the plans alone with­out any com­mit­ment from any­body. So talk about risks. This is what the coun­try needs." Chin is hope­ful of get­ting ap­proval this year.

"I would like to get the Gov­ern­ment's ap­proval this year. Once we get that, it should take about four years to com­plete. That land has been sit­ting there for al­most ten years and it's now an over­grown for­est. Noth­ing's go­ing on there." Chin com­plained that it is dif­fi­cult do­ing busi­ness in T&T. "I went with the Prime Min­is­ter to Eng­land to woo in­vestors and I had to lie. It is not easy do­ing busi­ness in T&T. In this coun­try, they look at suc­cess­ful busi­ness peo­ple as bad, not re­al­is­ing you hire and em­ploy 2,000 or 3,000 peo­ple."

Se­cu­ri­ty at Movi­eTowne

Derek Chin spoke about the chal­lenge of main­tain­ing se­cu­ri­ty at Movi­eTowne, which has be­come a con­cern in light of an at­tempt­ed car­jack­ing of a cou­ple's car at the traf­fic lights at the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way, out­side the cine­plex, on June 18. Chin said man­ag­ing and en­sur­ing that a large vol­ume of peo­ple is safe is an on­go­ing chal­lenge. "Last week­end, last Sat­ur­day, there was 6,500 peo­ple in Port-of-Spain, over 5,000 in Ch­agua­nas and 1,200 in To­ba­go in one day. Sat­ur­day and Sun­day were a record in Ch­agua­nas, which was 12,000 peo­ple and these were just peo­ple who paid."

"You have 30,000 to 40,000 peo­ple every week­end at Movi­eTowne. We do it every­day, sev­en days a week. It's a lot of pres­sure. Our num­bers last Ju­ly for peo­ple who paid were 131,000 peo­ple. And these are not even the vis­i­tors who did not pay." Chin has de­scribed this lat­est in­ci­dent a "scam," say­ing there is no ev­i­dence to prove that the in­ci­dent the cou­ple re­port­ed to Movi­eTowne took place. Po­lice are con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions. "It took me 33 years of hard work to reach here and peo­ple are try­ing to bring me down."