Pe­ter Christo­pher

Af­ter chang­ing the shape of the used car parts and for­eign used mar­ket decades ago, Bick­ram Ram­nar­ine is hop­ing his $500 mil­lion vi­sion will do the same to the tourism sec­tor on Trinidad’s east coast.

Ram­nar­ine has long been a fan of Ma­yaro, and over 20 years ago, he pur­chased land in the area that he vis­its twice a month to have a good time with friends.

Fol­low­ing the re­cent open­ing of a NP ser­vice sta­tion in Ma­yaro and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty’s pro­vi­sion of a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance, Ram­nar­ine has seen a chance to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty in a ma­jor way through de­vel­op­ment.

“I pur­chased this prop­er­ty about 20-some­thing years ago and I used to go Ma­yaro when I was small. I have been go­ing since 17 and every week­end we (would be) in Ma­yaro, lim­ing and hav­ing a good time. Ma­yaro re­al­ly is a nice des­ti­na­tion. A nice place for va­ca­tion. The peo­ple in Ma­yaro re­al­ly are spe­cial and have still been so up to to­day. “They are still a tourist-ori­ent­ed type of peo­ple and they re­al­ly need the jobs, there is a lot of un­em­ploy­ment there. With the gas sta­tion go­ing there now, that is the kick­start to my plan,” said Ram­nar­ine, the own­er of Bick’s Au­to Parts, a com­pa­ny that rev­o­lu­tionised the used car and car parts in­dus­try in the 1990s.

Ram­nar­ine’s new plan, which is cur­rent­ly es­ti­mat­ed to cost $500 mil­lion is New Ma­yaro, a mixed-use de­vel­op­ment, which will of­fer com­mer­cial, res­i­den­tial, cul­tur­al and eco-tourism spaces.

“The con­cept of de­vel­op­ment is called New Ma­yaro and the rea­son for this is that Ma­yaro cur­rent­ly has some chal­lenges, but al­so some op­por­tu­ni­ties. And that’s why we de­cid­ed be­cause of the fact that we have this 154-acre par­cel of land, we can mit­i­gate some of the cur­rent chal­lenges in Ma­yaro and we can gen­er­ate full-time and tem­po­rary jobs. We can bring for­eign ex­change to the area,” said Ram­nar­ine’s son, Syam Ram­nar­ine, who as CEO of the Bick’s group of com­pa­nies has tak­en charge of the push to cre­ate this space in the south-east­ern Trinidad com­mu­ni­ty.

“When I was a lit­tle boy, he would say one day, I’m gonna make this a big de­vel­op­ment. One day I am go­ing to change the way tourists come to Ma­yaro. As a lit­tle boy, I’d say he’s a lit­tle crazy, be­cause he loved his space so much, that I won­dered how is this go­ing to hap­pen be­cause Ma­yaro was so rur­al at a time. But he wasn’t crazy. He was crazy in love with Ma­yaro and that love to­day is com­ing to fruition,” said the younger Ram­nar­ine.

The ini­tial plans in­volve the con­struc­tion of a res­i­den­tial block of homes which are to be rent­ed out AirBnB-style. This would be fol­lowed by the cre­ation of a com­mer­cial cen­tre where restau­rants fea­tur­ing cui­sine from the area and the coun­try will be fea­tured. The Bick’s group al­so in­tends to ded­i­cate space to sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties to en­sure that there are a mul­ti­tude of ac­tiv­i­ties avail­able to vis­i­tors.

“Peo­ple will say, but why Ma­yaro? Why not Bar­ba­dos or St Lu­cia? Be­cause Ma­yaro is more than just beach. Ma­yaro is cul­ture and that’s what I’m telling you about the bio-lu­mi­nes­ence (in the Or­toire Riv­er). The peo­ple of Ma­yaro are hos­pitable, there are man­a­tees in the riv­er, there’s the dri­ve there which is an ex­pe­ri­ence in it­self,” said Ram­nar­ine, who drew ref­er­ence to a les­son he learned from a uni­ver­si­ty class­mate who boast­ed that in a few years the Mid­dle East would be­come a ma­jor tourist des­ti­na­tion.

Ram­nar­ine ad­mit­ted that the no­tion was laughed off then, but con­sis­tent in­vest­ment has led to Dubai, Abu Dab­hi and Do­ha be­com­ing among the most pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tions in the world.

“They cre­at­ed a tourism in­dus­try that now su­per­sedes the oil in­dus­try. So we’re not gonna wait. We’re not gonna wait to di­ver­si­fy the area. We are not gonna wait to cre­ate em­ploy­ment. We’re not go­ing to wait to bring more for­eign ex­change. We do that now. The process has start­ed with the gas sta­tion as the first part an in­te­gral part of de­vel­op­ment,” said Syam Ram­nar­ine.

“If the peo­ple come to­geth­er and bring that wel­come to the tourists, and Gov­ern­ment, we have the roads and in­fra­struc­ture, and then we bring de­vel­op­ment. We have a per­fect de­vel­op­ment to now bring em­ploy­ment and tourism to not just Ma­yaro and Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Syam Ram­nar­ine, “This de­vel­op­ment, we’re go­ing to be work­ing with a con­sor­tium of in­vestors to as­sist them to make this dream a re­al­i­ty and man­i­fest in­to re­al­i­ty is half a bil­lion-dol­lar vi­sion.”

The Bick’s group has al­ready dis­cussed the plan with the in­vest­ment de­part­ment of Tourism Trinidad Ltd, and the group is hope­ful that the com­ple­tion of the San­gre Grande to Man­zanil­la High­way and the up­grade of the ac­cess road to Ma­yaro will im­prove ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, Bick­ram Ram­nar­ine has al­ready hatched a strat­e­gy to bring vis­i­tors to the space and pro­mote Ma­yaro as an in­ter­na­tion­al tourist des­ti­na­tion.

“We will be giv­ing three free trips from Mi­a­mi to Trinidad, so when you come to Trinidad, we will hire a bus com­pa­ny who will take the job and trans­port peo­ple from the air­port to the des­ti­na­tion in Ma­yaro,” said Ram­nar­ine.

“While go­ing to that des­ti­na­tion, peo­ple don’t just sit down for a long pe­ri­od, they want to stop off and have a good time and go again and don’t feel the trek. What we will do, we will in­form all the bars, all the food places, and the restau­rants on the way. So at 10 o’clock to­mor­row we have a trip com­ing and be pre­pared, we will stop off by you, so they will now be ready for this bus and they will have ac­com­mo­da­tion ready, food every­thing. We will tell the peo­ple, this is what we serve there.”

Fol­low­ing the re­cent open­ing of the NP Ser­vice Sta­tion, the group will now seek to con­struct the first tranche of hous­es which will house the vis­i­tors.

“So we will test this out; we will do 50 hous­es first which will start very soon, maybe in a cou­ple months time. And that will kick­start that 50 hous­es, which like, if you buy a house, you will put it on the mar­ket and we will have a com­pa­ny that will rent it out for you. So if you have 50 homes avail­able, we will bring in 50 peo­ple on that day,” said Bick­ram Ram­nar­ine, who ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the plan would be great­ly ben­e­fi­cial to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“With this de­vel­op­ment, peo­ple will get em­ploy­ment and that will cut crime in Ma­yaro by three-quar­ter, it will change the whole game in Ma­yaro be­cause these bars and restau­rants would be ac­ti­vat­ed. They will em­ploy peo­ple,” he said.