If you take a walk through the cap­i­tal city it’s quite pos­si­ble that you would see sev­er­al va­cant build­ings or spots adorned with “For Sale” or “For Rent” signs.

Some may think that these nu­mer­ous va­can­cies in the cap­i­tal city are con­nect­ed to COVID-19, but while some clo­sures were forced by the shock cre­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic, the de­crease in com­mer­cial pres­ence in down­town Port-of-Spain start­ed long be­fore Chi­na record­ed its ini­tial in­fec­tions.

There have been build­ings in the cap­i­tal which have been un­oc­cu­pied for sev­er­al years.

The build­ing at the cor­ner of Cha­con Street and In­de­pen­dence Square South op­po­site Re­pub­lic Bank’s In­de­pen­dence Square branch was last oc­cu­pied by bmo­bile in De­cem­ber 2017 and has re­mained va­cant since the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant opt­ed to dis­con­tin­ue all of its flag­ship lo­ca­tions at the start of 2018.

It is one of sev­er­al spots along the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade that has been with­out ten­ants for some time.

It is a far cry from what the prom­e­nade her­ald­ed when it was of­fi­cial­ly opened in 1995 af­ter more than two years of work to re­vi­talise In­de­pen­dence Square.

Much of the work done on the prom­e­nade was ini­tial­ly spon­sored by the banks which line the perime­ter of In­de­pen­dence Square, and it ush­ered in an era of sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty as soon there­after Ex­cel­lent City Cen­tre opened its doors and fran­chis­es like Mc­Don­ald’s, Dairy Bar and Puff n Stuff bak­ery opened its doors.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site des­ti­na­tion360, “The re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of In­de­pen­dence Square has far ex­ceed­ed the ex­pec­ta­tions of those in­volved, and to­geth­er with the ad­di­tion of the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, the re­vived area was deemed the coun­try’s first Busi­ness Im­prove­ment Dis­trict.”

Al­most 30 years lat­er, the banks re­main but along the prom­e­nade are sev­er­al gaps as un­oc­cu­pied build­ings or, in some cas­es, park­ing lots which once housed sig­nif­i­cant gov­ern­ment of­fices are the neigh­bours to the old guard.

While Ex­cel­lent City Cen­tre re­mains, Ex­cel­lent Stores it­self closed its phys­i­cal store down­town in De­cem­ber 2020.

More wor­ry­ing­ly for busi­ness­men in Port-of-Spain, the ex­tend­ed va­can­cies are not on­ly found along the prom­e­nade but along sev­er­al of the busiest streets and malls in the city.

Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez has ac­knowl­edged the de­cline in com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty, con­firm­ing that the di­min­ish­ing num­ber of busi­ness­es in the cap­i­tal start­ed due to the down­turn in the econ­o­my years ago with the open­ing of the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza fur­ther in­creas­ing the num­ber of va­cant spaces in the city.

“A lot of build­ings be­came va­cant a cou­ple of years be­fore COVID due to the down­turn in the econ­o­my. You start­ed to see a lot of build­ings be­ing va­cant, and then you had the gov­ern­ment cam­pus open­ing. So when that hap­pened a lot of those build­ings were rent­ed to the gov­ern­ment, they moved to the gov­ern­ment cam­pus so that al­so added a num­ber of the build­ings be­ing emp­ty,” said Mar­tinez.

How­ev­er, the shift in lo­ca­tion has not trans­lat­ed to in­creased busi­ness in the down­town area.

Last Fri­day, Lin­da’s Bak­ery closed its Queen Street lo­ca­tion, which was its clos­est branch to Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus, with own­er Pe­ter George stat­ing it was un­der­per­form­ing.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) to find out if they had seen an in­crease in rental ac­tiv­i­ty at its parkade fa­cil­i­ty, which is ad­ja­cent to the Gov­ern­ment cam­pus.

In re­sponse, Ude­cott said, “There have been no sig­nif­i­cant changes in oc­cu­pan­cy over time at the parkade.”

Ude­cott con­firmed that the parkade has 40 shops, with five cur­rent­ly va­cant.

The Busi­ness Guardian was al­so in­formed that on­ly one of the eight kiosks at the parkade was va­cant at this time.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud said the in­creas­ing num­ber of emp­ty spaces in the city was an omi­nous sign for the city.

“Those that un­der­stand busi­ness, those that un­der­stand ur­ban de­vel­op­ment im­me­di­ate­ly recog­nise that you can­not have a city with­out ac­tive busi­ness to pro­vide for needs and to at­tract peo­ple to the com­mer­cial cen­tre,” said Aboud, who felt not enough was be­ing done to ad­dress the ap­par­ent ex­o­dus of busi­ness from the cap­i­tal.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly that the de­ci­sion mak­ers not on­ly do not un­der­stand our needs, but they don’t care about our needs and that is why there are so many va­can­cies in so many build­ings. And may I re­spect­ful­ly point out be­cause time is so short now for the city of Port-of-Spain, that some of those va­can­cies are op­po­site City Hall. They can see the un­oc­cu­pied build­ings and the for sale signs on the build­ings and it seems to bring no re­sponse from them. It is a mat­ter of great con­cern, it does speak to the need for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion to try and re­turn some com­merce to the City of Port-of-Spain,” Aboud said.

He said the ne­glect of the city had been an is­sue across sev­er­al gov­ern­ments.

“You have to un­der­stand that I have had the un­for­tu­nate ex­pe­ri­ence of deal­ing with more than one regime, more than one ad­min­is­tra­tion that came in­to of­fice and they re­al­ly don’t seem to care much about the city. A min­is­ter in a pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, not this cur­rent gov­ern­ment but in a pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment said that the busi­ness­es mov­ing out of the city was re­al­ly an ex­pan­sion. I asked if they move out and they don’t come back or if they move out and leave their premis­es va­cant how can that be con­sid­ered an ex­pan­sion?” Aboud asked.

He added that his firm was among the last that had its on­ly pres­ence in down­town Port-of-Spain, but based on the feed­back he had re­ceived the de­ci­sion to move from the cap­i­tal city was not based on the cost of rent but on oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions.

“I can tell you that in the City of Port-of-Spain, in some of the main streets, the rent is not even 50 per cent of what is be­ing charged in some of the malls and the malls are oc­cu­pied and the city is not. It is not a ques­tion of rent, it’s a ques­tion of out­come, it’s a ques­tion of con­ve­nience, it’s a ques­tion of clean­li­ness and safe­ty and it’s a ques­tion of un­der­stand­ing from those in au­thor­i­ty,” said Aboud.

Aboud’s stance on the rental cost was backed by the fact that Dig­i­cel bucked the trend last No­vem­ber when it moved from its flag­ship store from its up­town lo­ca­tion at Mar­aval Road, St Clair to Ex­cel­lent City Cen­tre.

Dig­i­cel CEO Abra­ham Smith told the Busi­ness Guardian last year that the space was larg­er than the pre­vi­ous lo­ca­tion but the rent was about the same.

Last week, Star­bucks opened its 14th branch in Aranguez. The pop­u­lar cof­fee fran­chise is among the fast­ing grow­ing busi­ness­es in T&T.

While the fran­chise has lo­ca­tions on the out­skirts of the city at Movi­eTowne and Eller­slie Plaza, it no­tably has no pres­ence in down­town Port-of-Spain.

Pres­tige CEO Si­mon Hardy said there was no macro-eco­nom­ic rea­son for the fran­chise’s ab­sence in the city as he ex­plained the com­pa­ny was still search­ing for a lo­ca­tion that would meet the fran­chise’s in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

He how­ev­er point­ed out that while Port-of-Spain still com­mands a sig­nif­i­cant amount of traf­fic due to the work­force that comes in­to the cap­i­tal, by 6 pm much of the city is va­cat­ed.

All Star­bucks lo­ca­tions in Trinidad cur­rent­ly close at 10 pm.

May­or Mar­tinez how­ev­er felt the re­vival of com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty could be tied to a re­turn of res­i­den­tial spaces in the down­town area.

He how­ev­er said that sev­er­al prop­er­ty hold­ers in down­town Port-of-Spain were re­luc­tant to make that shift.

“The Prime Min­is­ter in dis­cussing the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the City of Port-of-Spain cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who have com­mer­cial build­ings that were emp­ty, to con­vert them in­to res­i­den­tial and they can de­vel­op a new mar­ket as a re­sult of that. But I be­lieve own­ers of those prop­er­ties may have felt dif­fer­ent­ly, and some of them de­cid­ed that they want­ed to main­tain a par­tic­u­lar val­ue of the build­ing or cost of the build­ing. So, they prob­a­bly de­cid­ed that they will leave the build­ing emp­ty and hope for a bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty to come its way and they are wait­ing,” said Mar­tinez, who point­ed to the com­mer­cial hub that has de­vel­oped at One Wood­brook Place since it was opened.

The may­or said for this rea­son he was look­ing for­ward to fur­ther res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ments be­ing con­struct­ed as a part of the Port-of-Spain Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion project.

“You have pock­ets of de­vel­op­ment tak­ing place but it is not go­ing to hap­pen overnight. But what you ex­pect is that cer­tain things will hap­pen to work to­wards the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion. And as the econ­o­my starts to strength­en, peo­ple will have more con­fi­dence and more de­vel­op­ment will take place,” said Mar­tinez.

Aboud said he would con­tin­ue to stick it out in the cap­i­tal and work to­wards see­ing an­oth­er re­vival in the cap­i­tal.

“This is our na­tion’s cap­i­tal, our fam­i­ly has had a her­itage of faith in this city. Peo­ple still ask me the ques­tion why are you still there? This city taught me every­thing I know and I still con­sid­er it a great ho­n­our and a priv­i­lege to still be try­ing to re­vive Port-of-Spain and to keep it strong and ac­tive and alive. There are a few in­ter­est­ed par­ties in the gov­ern­ment in the out­come that Port-of-Spain could have, will keep the ef­fort up and try and see the pos­i­tives,” said Aboud.