St Lu­cia’s Op­po­si­tion Leader, Allen Chas­tanet, is ques­tion­ing the de­ci­sion by the is­land’s cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion to award a con­tract for the con­struc­tion of a Halls of Jus­tice com­plex in Cas­tries to one of T&T’s largest con­trac­tors, NH.

News of the project—which is be­ing con­struct­ed by way of a Build Own Lease Trans­fer (BOLT) arrange­ment—was first re­port­ed in the Busi­ness Guardian of May 2,.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia af­ter the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny on April 19, NH ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Emile Elias, said the Gov­ern­ment of St Lu­cia opt­ed for a BOLT to con­struct the Halls of Jus­tice be­cause it is anx­ious not to in­crease the is­land’s debt-to-GDP ra­tio.

“This BOLT, which means that NH is ful­ly fi­nanc­ing the en­tire project, re­quires the gov­ern­ment to pay a quar­ter­ly lease rental that re­flects the cost of the build­ing plus all the trans­ac­tion and bridg­ing-in­ter­est costs for a ful­ly out­fit­ted and equipped build­ings,” said Elias, adding that the base, fixed con­struc­tion cost is US$53 mil­lion (EC$143 mil­lion) and the to­tal in­vest­ment cost is US$61 mil­lion (EC$164.7 mil­lion).

St Lu­cia’s The Voice Week­end news­pa­per re­port­ed in its May 18 edi­tion that the Halls of Jus­tice, to be lo­cat­ed in Cas­tries, the cap­i­tal of St Lu­cia, would com­prise three ju­di­cial di­vi­sions: crim­i­nal, civ­il and fam­i­ly.

The fa­cil­i­ty will con­sist of 14 court­rooms, six mag­is­trate’s cham­bers, nine judge’s cham­bers, 11 wit­ness rooms, 10 ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices, a law li­brary, one 26-seater con­fer­ence room, one po­lice post, hold­ing cells and a high-se­cu­ri­ty de­fen­dants dock in the crim­i­nal court. The to­tal floor space of the court fa­cil­i­ties is es­ti­mat­ed to be 126,345 square feet, ac­cord­ing to the Voice.

At a con­struc­tion cost of EC$143 mil­lion and a to­tal floor space of 126,345 square feet, the con­struc­tion cost per square foot is EC$1,131, which in­cludes full de­sign ser­vices (at 10 per cent of con­struc­tion cost) build­ings that are ful­ly out­fit­ted as well as the con­struc­tion of the build­ings, which in­cludes pil­ing.

Elias pro­vid­ed a break­down of the el­e­ments of de­sign, con­struc­tion and out­fit­ting:

* De­sign—ar­chi­tec­tur­al; struc­tur­al; in­te­ri­or de­sign; me­chan­i­cal/elec­tri­cal/plumb­ing (MEP) and civ­il

* Con­struc­tion—two build­ings and con­nec­tor bridge to­talling 126,345 sq.ft

* Out­fit­ting—All fur­ni­ture-work­sta­tions/con­fer­ence ta­bles and chairs/desks/lounge fur­ni­ture; ac­cess con­trol sys­tems; CCTV; fire pro­tec­tion sys­tems; air con­di­tion­ing sys­tems; file stor­age sys­tems; da­ta/com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems (phones/wifi etc); au­dio-vi­su­al sys­tems for courts; judge podi­ums; court bench­es; kitchen ap­pli­ances; hold­ing cells; base­ment park­ing and a stand -by gen­er­a­tor sys­tems.

De­scrib­ing the con­struc­tion cost per square foot of EC$1,131 as “ex­or­bi­tant,” and “out­ra­geous,” Chas­tanet said the cur­rent cost of con­struc­tion of a high-end of­fice build­ing in St Lu­cia is about EC$500.

He said what is even more egre­gious was that in 2020 his ad­min­is­tra­tion was in ad­vanced ne­go­ti­a­tions for the con­struc­tion of a po­lice head­quar­ters and a cour­t­house next to each oth­er. The size of that com­plex was 110,000 square feet and the cost of it was US$30 mil­lion (EC$81 mil­lion).

“How is it pos­si­ble that al­most the same size of the build­ing is cost­ing al­most twice the amount of mon­ey (to con­struct)?” Chas­tanet asked.

Asked to pro­vide ev­i­dence to val­i­date that claim, he fur­nished the Busi­ness Guardian with a doc­u­ment from a project con­sul­tant that in­di­cat­ed an es­ti­mat­ed to­tal of US$30 mil­lion, and a build­ing cost per square foot of US$222.92 (EC$601.88). But the doc­u­ment states that “all es­ti­mat­ed costs were based on 2017 US dol­lar val­ues. The es­ti­mat­ed amounts do not in­clude VAT, fi­nanc­ing costs, es­ca­la­tion, per­mit fees (if ap­plic­a­ble), le­gal fees and ex­pens­es or haz­ardous ma­te­r­i­al costs.”

The doc­u­ment al­so states items that are not in­clud­ed in the es­ti­mat­ed cost of US$30 mil­lion:

* Fur­ni­ture, fix­tures and equip­ment (FF&E)...that have no per­ma­nent con­nec­tion to the struc­ture of a build­ing or util­i­ties;

* Fit-out of court­room in­te­ri­ors or po­lice sta­tion;

* Re­ha­bil­i­a­tion or fit-out of ex­ist­ing her­itage sites iden­ti­fied to be re­tained;

* Any work as­so­ci­at­ed with the con­struc­tion of a new bridge con­nec­tion from site to Bour­bon Street.

The es­ti­mat­ed to­tal cost al­so ex­cludes a de­sign con­tin­gency cost of US$397,630.60 for lo­cal con­sul­tants and a con­struc­tion con­tin­gency cost of US$2.39 mil­lion “to ac­count for vari­a­tions in cost.”

How was NH cho­sen?

In the May 2 Busi­ness Guardian pub­li­ca­tion, Elias was asked whether there had been any push­back from the Op­po­si­tion in St Lu­cia with re­gard to the award of this BOLT to a T&T com­pa­ny.

Elias said, “None so far. But I may say if there is push­back on the po­lit­i­cal side, it would not be that the Gov­ern­ment of St Lu­cia has used a high­ly qual­i­fied firm to do it. There are no con­struc­tion or fi­nanc­ing re­sources with­in St Lu­cia to car­ry out this size of BOLT.”

Re­spond­ing to that com­ment by Elias, Chas­tanet said, “When he said there was no com­pa­ny that could have done this in St Lu­cia, I beg to dif­fer. No com­pa­ny in St Lu­cia was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do this.”

The St Lu­cian politi­cian said there was no pro­cure­ment process, no bid­ding and no short list of St Lu­cian con­struc­tion com­pa­nies. He pro­vid­ed a list of con­struc­tion com­pa­nies in St Lu­cia that, he said, could have done the Halls of Jus­tice project: CIE; Fresh Start; Jame­cobs Qual­i­ty Con­struc­tion and Cepal Hold­ings.

Chas­tanet, a for­mer prime min­is­ter of St Lu­cia, out­lined two projects that he said the St Lu­cia gov­ern­ment has en­gaged in with­out trans­paren­cy. He point­ed to the sale of the con­ces­sion for the cruise ship port and a ma­jor hos­pi­tal, which in­clud­ed a search for qual­i­fied com­pa­nies.

“Our con­cern is that we are see­ing a pat­tern of be­hav­iour and the Halls of Jus­tice project has very much the same DNA as these oth­er projects: no bid­ding process; closed door and very few de­tails,” Chas­tanet said.

He said even more wor­ri­some is that the May 2 Busi­ness Guardian ar­ti­cle in­di­cat­ed that Re­pub­lic Bank and NH were the ones to pro­vide the fi­nanc­ing, but the in­ter­est rates had not then been de­ter­mined.

“This means the cost is go­ing to be po­ten­tial­ly high­er...The num­bers don’t add up and both the Op­po­si­tion and the pub­lic of St Lu­cia have been left to spec­u­late.”

On the is­sue of the lease rental cost of the build­ing for the 12 years of the BOLT arrange­ment, Chas­tanet, who served as prime min­is­ter of St Lu­cia be­tween 2016 and 2021, said, “The high­est rent that I know the Gov­ern­ment of St Lu­cia has paid is EC$7.50 or EC$8 a square foot. Even if you were to say the com­plex was 120,000 square feet, we are talk­ing about the rent with­out the fi­nanc­ing of EC$11 a square foot. And if you take five per cent fi­nanc­ing, that would add an­oth­er EC$10 a square foot.”

He not­ed that NH was the con­trac­tor for the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of a build­ing in St Lu­cia. The rent the Gov­ern­ment of St Lu­cia would have to pay over a 12-year pe­ri­od is EC$4 a square foot, said Chas­tanet, adding that it is in­ter­est­ing that the lease rental num­ber for the halls of jus­tice project has not been re­vealed.

A source who has had sight of the BOLT agree­ment, said it spec­i­fies pay­ment in two cur­ren­cies. The quar­ter­ly in­stall­ment is EC$4,781,744 and US$486,000. That works out to be EC$19,126,976 and US$1,944,000 a year. Over 12 years of the BOLT arrange­ment, that is EC$229,523,712 and US$23,328,000, for a to­tal of EC$292,509,312. The month­ly lease cost is EC$16.07 per square foot, ac­cord­ing to Sun­day Busi­ness cal­cu­la­tions.