Raphael John-Lall

The re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) put out by the Min­istry of Plan­ning in Au­gust for the de­vel­op­ment of the In­vad­er's Bay area, Au­drey Jef­fers High­way, evoked strong re­spons­es from dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try (JCC) and Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee-Sing. In a Sep­tem­ber 16, 2011, let­ter, the JCC re­quest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment with­draw the RFP for re­view. The JCC and Lee Sing have charged that there was in­suf­fi­cient con­sul­ta­tion with them be­fore the RFP was ad­ver­tised. In the RFP, the Min­istry of Plan­ning in­vit­ed de­vel­op­ers in­ter­est­ed in de­vel­op­ing the 70-acre site to sub­mit plans. The dead­line for sub­mis­sion of pro­pos­als is Oc­to­ber 4, 2011.

JCC meets with Gov­ern­ment

On Mon­day, the JCC met Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie and Trade Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz.

Ac­cord­ing to JCC pres­i­dent Afra Ray­mond, a broad del­e­ga­tion in­clud­ing mem­bers of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) and the T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) met with the min­is­ters. Ray­mond told the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day via e-mail nei­ther Tewarie nor Cadiz was pre­pared "to change or with­draw the RFP." "Min­is­ter Tewarie did promise to in­volve the JCC af­ter var­i­ous pro­pos­als were re­ceived and al­so to pre­pare a frame­work for RF­Ps go­ing for­ward." Ray­mond said the next step is to go pub­lic with their con­cerns "over this opaque RFP process." "It is dis­turb­ing to see the hap­haz­ard, top down ap­proach from the Min­istry of Plan­ning.

It ap­pears to be a con­tin­u­a­tion of the ap­proach of the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, in which the largest projects were hatched in se­cre­cy." Movi­eTowne was men­tioned in the JCC's let­ter to the Min­istry of Plan­ning, where it was point­ed out that the RFP re­quires that new de­vel­op­ments in the In­vad­er's Bay area must be "com­ple­men­tary to the ex­ist­ing de­vel­op­ment." In its let­ter, the JCC called this "an in­ex­plic­a­ble and im­prac­ti­cal re­quire­ment, with ab­solute­ly no ba­sis in prop­er plan­ning prac­tice." Ray­mond said the JCC is not at­tack­ing any one de­vel­op­er or pro­pos­al, but it would like to see trans­par­ent de­vel­op­ment.

"We are in no way against any par­tic­u­lar per­son or pro­pos­al. All we want to see is a prop­er process for the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try," he said.

"For far too long in this coun­try, we have had lop­sided de­vel­op­ment. This must change. "Look at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and the Uff Re­port and the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). There are lessons to be learnt from these cas­es. Cor­rect process­es are im­por­tant."

Ray­mond said the JCC wants to see T&T prop­er­ly de­vel­oped. "What we are call­ing for is a road map of de­vel­op­ment. It's okay for every­one to have dif­fer­ent views and we have no prob­lem with that, but we want to see broad con­sul­ta­tion among all stake­hold­ers."

Derek Chin: No pref­er­en­tial treat­ment

Derek Chin, chair­man of the three Movi­eTowne cine­plex­es-trad­ing as Mul­ti­cin­e­mas (Trinidad) Ltd-told the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day he has in no way tried to in­flu­ence the Gov­ern­ment to get pref­er­en­tial treat­ment with re­gard to the RFP. "In fact, I was sur­prised when the Gov­ern­ment put the RFP out in the me­dia. I didn't even know about it. I was out the coun­try." The first Movi­eTowne opened al­most eight years ago at In­vad­er's Bay. The area com­pris­es ten screens, a shop­ping com­plex, sev­er­al restau­rants and a video ar­cade. Chin said he has had meet­ings with past and present gov­ern­ments and there were "three or four" oth­er de­vel­op­ers who al­so had an in­ter­est and pro­pos­als in de­vel­op­ing the area. "Some peo­ple were in­ter­est­ed in build­ing a hos­pi­tal for health tourism and oth­ers, con­do­mini­ums and oth­er pro­pos­als, so it's not on­ly me who has had pro­pos­als for a long time."

Chin said all he wants now is 35 acres for his Streets of the World project. "All I need is 35 acres out of the 70 acres that the Gov­ern­ment has al­lot­ted in this area." Chin said he in­tends to fol­low the law and will take his pro­pos­als and now sub­mit them un­der the terms of the RFP. "Ob­vi­ous­ly, we will have to make some ad­just­ments and make this con­form to the RFP, but it will not be the first time. We have been mak­ing changes and pro­pos­als since the (Patrick) Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion," he said. Chin said it is pos­si­ble that the cost could in­crease if Movi­eTowne's in­vestors are giv­en the land for the project. "Right now, we es­ti­mate that the cost would be a $1 bil­lion for the Streets of the World project, but that could change. Even now, we are still spend­ing mon­ey on Movi­eTowne." He said who ever the Gov­ern­ment gives the land to, he wish­es them the best. "Peo­ple think that you can be­come a bil­lion­aire overnight, but they are wrong. Who ever gets that land will be tak­ing fi­nan­cial risk. Since 2003, I still have not made mon­ey from Movi­eTowne and I am still pay­ing off loans. It is the re­al­i­ty."

Ar­chi­tect: A boost to the econ­o­my

Raul Poon Kong, di­rec­tor at NL­BA Ar­chi­tects-the lead ar­chi­tect for the con­struc­tion of Movi­eTowne-told the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day that Chin get­ting per­mis­sion to move ahead with his Streets of the World project at In­vad­er's Bay would help stim­u­late the econ­o­my. "I would think that the Gov­ern­ment would want to stim­u­late the econ­o­my. The pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment bor­rowed mon­ey and put us in debt. Just look at the bud­get deficit. The Gov­ern­ment has to do this to stim­u­late pri­vate sec­tor spend­ing," Poon Kong said.

He said there are a few ways for a gov­ern­ment to stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

"The Gov­ern­ment can take a loan and in­vest in in­fra­struc­ture projects.

"The sec­ond way is through tax­es and levies to raise mon­ey.

"The next way is to stim­u­late and set the en­vi­ron­ment for pri­vate sec­tor to stim­u­late the econ­o­my," Poon Kong said.

The ar­chi­tect said he has noth­ing against the JCC and recog­nis­es that it is an im­por­tant stake­hold­er that pro­vides "checks and bal­ances," but stat­ed he is not clear on the JCC's po­si­tion. "The Gov­ern­ment has their job to do and then the JCC is there, too. It's al­ways about a bal­ance and I guess the JCC is there to act in terms of checks and bal­ances. How­ev­er, if there are things that the JCC does not un­der­stand, then they should come to me," Poon Kong said. Poon Kong said that when Movi­eTowne was be­ing built, on­ly lo­cal labour was used. "We have all used lo­cal con­tent. In fact, for the Streets of the World project, Chin agreed that four oth­er lo­cal ar­chi­tec­tur­al com­pa­nies will be used. There is al­so the work of three Car­ni­val de­sign­ers that will be used. All this is lo­cal con­tent." Poon Kong said the cul­ture in T&T is that suc­cess­ful peo­ple who have con­tributed to the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment are al­ways at­tacked.

"We have to look at the so­cial con­scious­ness of this coun­try. We have pulled down suc­cess­ful peo­ple like Bri­an Lara and Pe­ter Min­shall. We have al­ways said neg­a­tive things about peo­ple who are suc­cess­ful," he said.

The JCC's po­si­tion:

"The JCC has se­ri­ous con­cerns re­gard­ing the re­quest for de­sign/build pro­pos­als (RFP) for the de­vel­op­ment of In­vad­er's Bay as a re­sult of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my's ad­ver­tise­ment in the press in the last week of Au­gust. "The pub­li­ca­tion of the RFP sug­gests a com­mit­ment to an open and trans­par­ent de­vel­op­ment process, for which we have been long-term ad­vo­cates. "How­ev­er, the JCC con­sid­ers the RFP to be ill-con­ceived for these rea­sons: "The pro­pos­als are to be sub­mit­ted by Oc­to­ber 4, 2011, which will al­low a max­i­mum of six weeks for po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ers to com­ply with the Min­istry of Plan­ning's re­quire­ments for the de­vel­op­ment of this 70-acre site.

"The JCC is aware that there are sev­er­al un­so­licit­ed pro­pos­als from pri­vate sec­tor de­vel­op­ers for the de­vel­op­ment of In­vad­er's Bay, which have al­ready been sub­mit­ted to Gov­ern­ment in the form of de­sign con­cepts. There is lit­tle doubt that those took far longer than six weeks to pre­pare. "Giv­en that the like­ly con­struc­tion cost of this de­vel­op­ment is es­ti­mat­ed to ex­ceed $5 bil­lion, and the de­mand­ing re­quire­ments of the pro­pos­als, one can scarce­ly be­lieve that the pub­li­ca­tion of this RFP will elic­it any new com­pet­i­tive de­sign and build pro­pos­als. "In ad­di­tion to the JCC's se­ri­ous doubts as to the true ef­fect of this RFP, its de­f­i­n­i­tion of scope is far too gen­er­alised, which leaves the eval­u­a­tion and se­lec­tion process open to po­ten­tial abuse or the 'whims and fan­cies' of per­son­al pref­er­ence."

Flash­back:

Be­low is part of an ar­ti­cle that was pub­lished on Ju­ly 7, 2011, in the Busi­ness Guardian fol­low­ing an in­ter­view with Derek Chin.

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 In­vad­er's 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."

No con­sul­ta­tion with PoS may­or

As re­port­ed in the Trinidad Guardian on Tues­day, Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing raised con­cerns about the lack of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion from the Min­istry of Plan­ning in invit­ing de­vel­op­ers to sub­mit ideas for de­vel­op­ing In­vaders' Bay. He said In­vad­er's Bay be­long to the city of Port-of-Spain and de­vel­op­ment is be­ing pro­posed with­out con­sul­ta­tion. "These lands can­not be de­vel­oped with­out the as­sent of the (Port-of-Spain) City Cor­po­ra­tion," he said. The Trinidad Guardian re­port­ed that Plan­ning Min­is­ter Tewarie said he in­tends to have talks with the Lee Sing on this top­ic.