In the span of two weeks, two of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most recog­nised fran­chis­es un­veiled new branch lo­ca­tions at Brent­wood Mall.

Ex­cel­lent Stores had spent much of the last two years clos­ing its phys­i­cal lo­ca­tions as the com­pa­ny shift­ed fo­cus to on­line sales, but two weeks ago it re­versed that trend by open­ing a new branch at the shop­ping mall in cen­tral Trinidad.

Massy Stores’ de­ci­sion to open a new branch proved a bit less sur­pris­ing, as the com­pa­ny had been rapid­ly ex­pand­ing op­er­a­tions in the past two years.

How­ev­er the Brent­wood lo­ca­tion was in the Massy’s plans for more than decade, and the branch, which was of­fi­cial­ly opened last Mon­day, is of­fi­cial­ly the largest of the com­pa­ny’s 23 su­per­mar­kets in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The per­son be­hind the Brent­wood Mall, Dr Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh, chair­man of Caribbean Hous­ing Ltd, told the Busi­ness Guardian that the grow­ing es­tab­lish­ment of no­table brands at Brent­wood rep­re­sent­ed a recog­ni­tion of the area’s po­ten­tial, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en it’s prox­im­i­ty to Ed­in­burgh 500 and en­vi­rons.

“Any­one with a mod­icum of en­tre­pre­neur­ship would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly see that our lo­ca­tion lends it­self to many things that oth­er de­vel­op­ments in the (Ch­agua­nas) area wouldn’t have. Brent­wood is at the mouth of the sec­ond largest hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try. The largest be­ing Trinci­ty. Ed­in­burgh is the sec­ond largest hous­ing de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go and we are at the mouth of that,” said Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh.

The plans for the Brent­wood had been in train for about 15 years, with the first signs of what was to come for the shop­ping Mall emerg­ing with the ar­rival of pop­u­lar in­ter­na­tion­al brand Chuck E Cheese in 2014.

How­ev­er the chal­lenges of get­ting to the point where the ma­jor names want a spot at the Brent­wood Mall spanned over five decades.

Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh ad­mit­ted to fac­ing many a tri­al to get the land, which once housed sug­ar cane farms, de­vel­oped in­to prime re­al es­tate for both res­i­den­tial and busi­ness.

The land has been owned by Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh and his fa­ther, Jang Ba­hadoors­ingh, for over 50 years. For more than 20 years it re­mained ap­proved on­ly for agri­cul­tur­al use.

“Well, the main chal­lenge was get­ting plan­ning per­mis­sion, many, many moons ago, maybe about over 30 years ago. To get plan­ning per­mis­sion for the en­tire de­vel­op­ment to be trans­formed from agri­cul­ture, to hous­ing and in­dus­try. That was a very large de­ci­sion that took many many years,” said Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh.

The mas­sive burst of growth with­in the Bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas helped Caribbean Hous­ing in that re­gard. The ap­proval even­tu­al­ly came as the cen­tral bor­ough rose to be­come one of the busiest ar­eas in Trinidad.

That hur­dle may have been over­come, but the in­creas­ing ex­pan­sion of Ch­agua­nas quick­ly lead to an­oth­er hin­drance.

Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh ac­knowl­edged the traf­fic con­ges­tion which came with the Bor­ough’s rapid growth had to be con­sid­ered with­in the plans.

“What we have de­vel­oped and what the gov­ern­ment has de­vel­oped too, and what has been de­vel­oped in Mon­trose and all that, giv­en the road sys­tem. The road sys­tem lends it­self to a tremen­dous amount of traf­fic. And we have cap­i­talised on that, to en­sure that what­ev­er we do, we have enough land to en­sure that what­ev­er we do would avoid con­ges­tion,” he said, “be­cause con­ges­tion is a ma­jor prob­lem in the cen­tral area as you know.”

The con­stant traf­fic con­ges­tion has been a turn off for both po­ten­tial res­i­den­tial clients and busi­ness­es, and Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh knew the prob­lem would have to be ad­dressed be­fore the area would be vi­able in the eyes of po­ten­tial clients.

Hav­ing spent more than 30 years await­ing gov­ern­ment ap­proval for the land, Ba­hadoors­ingh had a lot of time to ob­serve the prob­lems and po­ten­tial ways the de­vel­op­ment could avoid sim­i­lar is­sues.

“Well, the ma­jor thing is, you do not over­build. In oth­er parts of Ch­agua­nas, you have over­build­ing, not enough up park­ing, in­ad­e­quate road net­works, etc etc. When you en­ter Brent­wood Boule­vard or Ed­in­burgh Boule­vard, you will no­tice it is a dual lane and you ask your­self where else in cen­tral you have a en­trance like that which is dual?’ asked the Caribbean Hous­ing Chair­man, who ad­mit­ted the vast ex­panse of land avail­able al­so proved piv­otal in cre­at­ing a space where traf­fic would not be great a con­cern.

“We hap­pened to have had the land since 1961, 545 acres and we have been able to plan in such a way that peo­ple, that mo­torists could have rea­son­able en­try, enough park­ing,” said Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh, who said de­spite the cur­rent in­ter­est the Brent­wood Mall would not be look­ing to ex­pand to the size of Trinci­ty Mall.

But the num­ber of clients is ex­pand­ing.

Pop­u­lar food chain Hak­ka is set to open an out­let which will of­fer dri­ve through ser­vice to cus­tomers at the lo­ca­tion while Raw Fit­ness Health Club is set to open its sec­ond gym on April 28.

That gym will re­port­ed­ly be the largest gym in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The fa­cil­i­ty will in­clude an as­tro­turf field which will fa­cil­i­tate in­door foot­ball (fut­sal) and crick­et.

But the road to here was a long jour­ney with sev­er­al con­nec­tions to Caribbean Hous­ing’s past. The de­vel­op­ment was ini­tial­ly planned in keep­ing with con­cepts used in pre­vi­ous work done by the de­vel­op­er at West­moor­ings.

Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh said the de­ci­sion to name the area Brent­wood was meant to ex­em­pli­fy the de­vel­op­ment dif­fer­en­tial feel to neigh­bour­ing Ed­in­burgh 500.

“We did West Moor­ings too, apart from the high rise build­ings, West Moor­ings and West Mall was done by me. So what we want­ed to do was cre­ate an as­pect of that in Cen­tral,” he said.

The de­vel­op­ment style has earned ku­dos. At the Massy Stores open­ing, Massy’s CEO Ger­vase Warn­er com­ment­ed that the com­mute in­to the area made him feel like he was in Mi­a­mi, a point echoed by Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon.

He took he praise, but said the de­sign was not based on any for­eign city but in­stead the best pos­si­ble use of the lay­out

“When we were plan­ning our lay­out, and de­sign­ing our hous­es. We nev­er ever pon­dered im­i­tat­ing any­place else,” he said.

“I feel what they are try­ing to say is that they are dri­ving in­to a place that is pleas­ant, well de­signed and well laid out. At least that is es­sen­tial­ly what they are try­ing to say,” he in­sist­ed.

The plans how­ev­er are not sole­ly for the mall, as Dr Ba­hadoors­ingh is plan­ning to be­gin con­struc­tion on two high­rise res­i­den­tial build­ings in Brent­wood when the econ­o­my re­cov­ers suf­fi­cient­ly from the shocks of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.