JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 18, 2025

Bagshot revival through Box Park

by

PETER CHRISTOPHER
15 days ago
20250702

For most of the mil­len­ni­um, the mem­o­ry of Bagshot House, Mar­aval would have been lost to most in T&T.

The build­ing, which was once one of the most recog­nis­able homes of colo­nial T&T, was de­mol­ished in 1999.

Since then, it had large­ly been known as the emp­ty lot of land along Sad­dle Road Mar­aval just af­ter the Roy­al Palm Suite ho­tel.

That changed ear­li­er this year, when fast food restau­rant Wendy’s opened a new out­let in pre-fab­ri­cat­ed ship­ping con­tain­ers on the site in April.

In ear­ly June more con­tain­ers adorned the ex­panse of land with an im­age “Bagshot Box Park Com­ing Soon” draped along the side fac­ing pedes­tri­ans and ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic along the Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval.

In re­cent weeks some of those pass­ing by no­ticed ex­ca­va­tors and oth­er con­struc­tion ve­hi­cles head­ing in and out of the site, as con­struc­tion on the Bagshot Box Park is push­ing along.

In a phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, the team be­hind the park con­firmed the use of the Bagshot name was in­deed meant to pre­serve the his­to­ry of the space, in­clud­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion to ed­u­cate vis­i­tors about the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of the Bagshot House.

“It does have a his­tor­i­cal sto­ry be­hind it. Once it’s com­plete­ly built out, I think cus­tomers and peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed in be­ing a part of the space would have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing as to where the name was de­rived from and how we came about with the en­tire de­sign. We do have a con­cept in mind to high­light the rea­son why it’s called Bagshot Box Park. There will be a pre­sen­ta­tion of what the area rep­re­sents,” said the team mem­ber.

The land had been the lo­ca­tion of Bagshot House, which was con­struct­ed in 1904 as part of the Champs Élysées es­tate. The land was owned by the De Boissiere fam­i­ly be­fore fi­nan­cial chal­lenges led to its sale to the Sturm fam­i­ly in the 1930s. It then be­came a ho­tel and for a time was al­so a night­club be­fore it was bought from the Sturm fam­i­ly late in the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The Bagshot Box Park team how­ev­er as­sured, de­spite Wendy’s be­ing the first ten­ant of the box park, that this new in­car­na­tion would not sim­ply be an­oth­er food park de­spite the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty and suc­cess en­joyed by oth­er open-air food courts around the coun­try.

Food parks and courts have risen sig­nif­i­cant­ly in pop­u­lar­i­ty in T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the wake of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The parks have sprung up at var­i­ous spots along the East-West cor­ri­dor and in Cen­tral Trinidad and, in most cas­es, have at­tract­ed large crowds and vis­i­tors from vary­ing ar­eas of the coun­try.

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of such spots was re­cent­ly recog­nised by the own­ers of C3 Shop­ping Cen­tre, who opened a sim­i­lar con­cept food court at the San Fer­nan­do lo­ca­tion called the Eatery.

In­deed Bagshot Box Park would not be the first food park fea­tur­ing ship­ping con­tain­er spots opened this year, as the Aranguez Food Park opened on March 1, fea­tur­ing sev­er­al con­tain­er units catered for food out­lets.

The Bagshot team said the rise in pop­u­lar­i­ty of food parks and food courts around the coun­try did not in­form the de­ci­sion to trans­form the area, which had been va­cant for over two decades.

The team mem­ber ex­plained that Bagshot Box Park will have a unique, mod­ern feel and will not re­sem­ble oth­er con­tain­er parks.

The park will of­fer a va­ri­ety of ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing re­tail, live en­ter­tain­ment, and more, mak­ing it a dis­tinct and niche des­ti­na­tion.

“We nev­er took in­spi­ra­tion from any lo­cal food spots. What we’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on is pret­ty niche in my opin­ion. Yes, it is a con­tain­er park, but it’s not like any oth­er con­tain­er park in Trinidad, be­cause we have a va­ri­ety of things to do. It’s not on­ly food and bev­er­age. We al­so have re­tail spots com­ing in, where friends and fam­i­lies could go and ac­tu­al­ly shop in these places. While some­one sits and has a meal, some­one else could go to shop, some­one else could do an­oth­er sort of ac­tiv­i­ty. They would be live en­ter­tain­ment,” the team mem­ber said.

The Bagshot team em­pha­sised that the area would pro­vide a space for net­work­ing, en­ter­tain­ment, and fit­ness.

“This idea was in the mak­ing for quite some time now. We just want­ed to cre­ate a space where peo­ple could come and net­work and en­joy good news, have fun times, and meet new peo­ple. And one of the things that we re­al­ly want­ed to im­ple­ment at a time was some sort of sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty. So, we came up with a pick­le­ball court, which we would be im­ple­ment­ing as well,” the team mem­ber told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“These pick­le­ball courts would have mem­ber­ship ac­cess, and so you’d have, the best of both worlds. You have the food, you have the en­ter­tain­ment, but you al­so have the ath­let­ic as­pect, peo­ple who would want to come and have fun with their fam­i­ly but al­so en­joy some sort of fit­ness ses­sion.”

The de­ci­sion to in­clude pick­le­ball may raise some eye­brows, the rack­et sport does cur­rent­ly have a sig­nif­i­cant foot­print in T&T and the Bagshot Box Park is hop­ing the in­clu­sion of the court will spark some in­ter­est in the sport and the space.

Pick­le­ball is a game sim­i­lar to ten­nis which al­so bor­rows el­e­ments of oth­er rack­et sports such as bad­minton and ping pong. A pick­le­ball court is small­er than the tra­di­tion­al ten­nis court.

“It’s fresh. It’s some­thing that not many peo­ple have ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore, and this is one thing our com­pa­ny is known for bring­ing fresh, new ideas and ac­tiv­i­ties to T&T.

“So we try to use pick­le­ball be­cause it’s not some­thing that peo­ple are very fa­mil­iar with, and it’s an av­enue to open up op­por­tu­ni­ties for pick­le­ball as well in Trinidad, be­cause maybe in fu­ture, we would have more pick­le­ball courts around. This is what it is now. Be­cause now no­body is fa­mil­iar with the sport, but you want to in­tro­duce some­thing that peo­ple could gain knowl­edge on and it could be a fun ex­pe­ri­ence as well,” the team mem­ber said.

Con­struc­tion of the Bagshot Box Park is still on­go­ing, but the team mem­ber told the Busi­ness Guardian that there are look­ing for­ward to the new it­er­a­tion of the Bagshot name.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored