Con­struc­tion has fi­nal­ly start­ed on what is ex­pect­ed to be a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar project that will trans­form 70 acres of In­vaders Bay and the west­ern part of Port-of-Spain.

The project that has of­ten been marred by con­tro­ver­sy is ex­pect­ed to see sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment on the wa­ter­front and link Movi­eTowne to Co­corite via a board­walk. There is al­so ex­pect­ed to be a ma­jor ho­tel, high val­ue hous­ing, busi­ness­es and shops and en­ter­tain­ment.

De­scrib­ing the move as pos­i­tive for the econ­o­my, Ude­cott’s chair­man Noel Gar­cia told the Busi­ness Guardian that works be­gan about a month ago, adding that Na­mal­co Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd was award­ed a $70 mil­lion con­tract for build­ing out the in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing roads, elec­tric­i­ty, tele­phone, ICT and nat­ur­al gas among oth­er things.

“We went out to ten­der some­time in 2020 and we got pro­po­nents who had ex­pressed an in­ter­est in us­ing the land. So we had two pro­po­nents who ex­pressed in­ter­est, we have an­oth­er three who have al­so ex­pressed in­ter­est and we hope that when we fi­nal­ly de­vel­op the en­tire site we would go out for an Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est to the re­main­der,” Gar­cia fur­ther ex­plained, not­ing that in­fra­struc­ture is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of 2022.

He said one of the pro­po­nents, which al­ready con­duct­ed fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies, will es­tab­lish a “long stay ho­tel” car­ry­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al name and the Busi­ness Guardian un­der­stands this is an­oth­er Mar­riott brand.

Fur­ther, Gar­cia said there are al­so plans for com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial spaces along with a ma­ri­na.

Ac­cord­ing to Gar­cia said the project will gen­er­ate much need­ed em­ploy­ment and boost eco­nom­ic growth.

“This will gen­er­ate a lot of em­ploy­ment in the con­struc­tion phase and hope­ful­ly long-term em­ploy­ment when the de­vel­op­ment is ful­ly sub­scribed and op­er­a­tional,” Gar­cia added.

Al­so, he said the pro­po­nents are ex­pect­ed to start their work in the first quar­ter of 2023.

Ac­cord­ing to Ude­cott’s web­site the area which was re­claimed “has emerged as a mod­ern com­mer­cial and en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre” with ac­tiv­i­ties such as the Movi­etowne Com­plex, the PriceS­mart Shop­ping Club, a Court­yard by Mar­riott Ho­tel and the BHP Bil­li­ton cor­po­rate build­ing.

It not­ed that cur­rent de­vel­op­ment con­trols al­low for, in broad terms, fur­ther of­fice, com­mer­cial and re­tail space, recre­ation­al parks, ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion and con­fer­enc­ing fa­cil­i­ties, res­i­dences, a ma­ri­na and a fer­ry ter­mi­nal.

Ude­cott fur­ther said that it is rec­om­mend­ed that the In­vaders Bay area fea­ture the T&T Glob­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre.

“More­over, fur­ther land recla­ma­tion will be un­der­tak­en west of In­vaders Bay along the fore­shore/Au­drey Jef­fers High­way and con­tin­ue to Fish­er­man’s Bay, near to Peake’s Ser­vice Sta­tion,” the com­pa­ny said.

It added that this recla­ma­tion ef­fort will pro­vide for the po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment of beach­es, beach front theme parks and re­sorts which will of­fer recre­ation­al op­por­tu­ni­ties to res­i­dents and vis­i­tors.

A board­walk is pro­posed from the In­vaders Bay De­vel­op­ment to cen­tral Port-of-Spain which will of­fer easy con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the Cen­tral Busi­ness Dis­trict and oth­er ar­eas of the cap­i­tal city.

Gar­cia fur­ther said the ini­tia­tive is in keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment’s re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion ob­jec­tive for the cap­i­tal.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ude­cott is work­ing to es­tab­lish a green park “right off In­vaders Bay close to the fore­shore,” Gar­cia said.

“This was con­tained when the Prime Min­is­ter had the ‘Spot­light on Port-of-Spain’ some­time in No­vem­ber 2019. This is noth­ing new but COVID had put a lit­tle damper but now hope­ful­ly, out of COVID, a lot of plans which were kind of dor­mant you are now see­ing it blos­som one again,” Gar­cia ex­plained.

Is it fair?

Derek Chin, who spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian from Guyana, said he sim­ply got fed-up of wait­ing on Gov­ern­ment for an an­swer and in­stead took his busi­ness to that coun­try.

“And as you can see I’m do­ing quite well in Guyana,” Chin added.

How­ev­er, while laud­ing Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts, Chin said he was in­stru­men­tal in try­ing to de­vel­op the area “right down to the sea.”

“I had tend­ed twice for my Streets of the World and I didn’t hear any­thing and I said some­body blocked me and I took the funds and I built Guyana in­stead which seems to be a good de­ci­sion.

“But now we see all this sort of work go­ing on so we just dropped it to­tal­ly be­cause there was no re­sponse as to whether my project was not al­lowed or whether they didn’t like it and that was ten years ago,” Chin ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he said he was ap­proached by Ude­cott “on­ly last week” to en­quire whether he was “still in­ter­est­ed in do­ing some­thing.

“I mean I will al­ways be in­ter­est­ed but I don’t know what the terms and con­di­tions are. We just don’t know enough from Ude­cott. The land needs to be de­vel­oped but is it a lev­el play­ing field? We don’t know. I am not hold­ing any grouse but I feel they (Gov­ern­ment) need to be above board with these projects be­cause what comes be­hind af­fects Movi­eTowne.

“The Gov­ern­ment needs to tell the peo­ple ex­act­ly what is hap­pen­ing there be­cause it’s been a very hot item in the past,” Chin added.

Char­tered sur­vey­or and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) Afra Ray­mond when con­tact­ed said it seems that what is tak­ing place is the in­stal­la­tion of ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture, ie roads, drains, lights and wa­ter.

“But it would be in­ter­est­ing to know the de­sign/lay­out and in­tend­ed pur­pose of this project.

“With­out those el­e­men­tary de­sign/lay­out de­tails, one is un­able to make a sen­si­ble com­ment, apart from opac­i­ty be­ing an in­tend­ed out­come,” Ray­mond said.

His­to­ry of the area

In 2014 Gov­ern­ment gives the green light for the $5.5 bil­lion In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment, but the JCC had ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of op­er­at­ing un­der a shroud of se­cre­cy, say­ing the project was be­ing done in breach of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board reg­u­la­tions.

In the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion, the JCC was seek­ing in­for­ma­tion un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­lat­ing to the ten­der­ing process for the con­struc­tion of en­tire pro­posed prop­er­ty at since 2011.

Two lo­cal com­pa­nies-–In­vaders Bay Ma­rine Ltd and Da Chin Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Ltd-–had got­ten the nod from Cab­i­net for their pro­pos­als

In 2014, High Court judge Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad ruled in favour of the JCC.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad stat­ed there must al­ways be trans­paren­cy in any project un­der­tak­en by Gov­ern­ment and that all at­tempts should be made as to dis­pel any per­cep­tion of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety or mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic funds in the car­ry­ing out of those projects

Chin, chair­man of Da Chin En­ter­pris­es and Mul­ti­cin­e­mas Ltd Movi­eTowne’s par­ent com­pa­ny, had re­vealed that his plan was to build themed spaces re­flec­tive of the coun­try, such as In­di­an Street, African Street, Chi­nese Street, Syr­i­an-Lebanese Street, Fash­ion Street, etc, to show­case T&T’s cul­tur­al her­itage and peo­ple’s love of shop­ping.

CLICK FOR MORE BUSI­NESS NEWS