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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Olsen’s $350M Roxborough vision being realised

by

Anthony Wilson
19 days ago
20250703

Gar­ry Olsen, an ex­pe­ri­enced prop­er­ty de­vel­op­er from up­state New York, first vis­it­ed To­ba­go as part of an in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel con­sul­tan­cy 40 years ago. In sub­se­quent vis­its to the is­land, he spot­ted some flat land on the wind­ward side of the is­land in the com­mu­ni­ty of Rox­bor­ough and thought to him­self that it would make a great de­vel­op­ment.

Olsen’s vi­sion for a prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment on the ocean­front at Rox­bor­ough was un­veiled last month when the multi­na­tion­al hos­pi­tal­i­ty com­pa­ny, Hilton, an­nounced the sign­ing of Ele­phant Tree Re­sort and Vil­las To­ba­go, the first Ta­pes­try Col­lec­tion by Hilton ho­tel on the is­land, sched­uled to open in 2028.

The all-in cost of the project—in­clud­ing a pri­vate waste­water treat­ment plant, wa­ter stor­age and land ac­qui­si­tion—is TT$350 mil­lion, which is about US$52 mil­lion.

The re­sort com­pris­es 40 ho­tel rooms and 126 ful­ly fur­nished vil­las, avail­able for sale, with 88 three-bed­room units and 38 two-bed­room units, all of which will face more than 1,000 feet of ocean­front.

The brand­ed vil­las will of­fer buy­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to join an op­tion­al rental pro­gramme that will al­low them to add their units to the ho­tel’s in­ven­to­ry.

Al­ready, 40 of the 126 vil­las, with a cur­rent price range of be­tween US$400,000 and US$650,000, have been ”spo­ken for,” said Olsen, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian last Thurs­day.

The con­struc­tion of the vil­las is un­der­way, with the first block of res­i­dences ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in be­tween 90 and 120 days. The prop­er­ty de­vel­op­er said the project is ex­pect­ed to gen­er­ate be­tween 100 and 150 con­struc­tion jobs and some 200 to 250 per­ma­nent jobs.

“One of the key points that af­fects the de­sire to buy the units for Trinida­di­ans is the fact that they are able to buy the units with TT dol­lars, but if they’re in the rental pro­gramme, they will be get­ting their in­come back US dol­lars, which we all know is a bit of an is­sue down here. This is a very good way to con­vert TT dol­lars in­to US dol­lars,” he said.

Ex­e­cut­ing his vi­sion for the prop­er­ty did not come eas­i­ly or quick­ly for Olsen.

He ac­quired 22 acres of land at Rox­bor­ough in four parcels in 2005 and 2006.

In June 2008, a com­pa­ny called Saints De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd mort­gaged 20 acres “more or less” of the land for a loan of US$1.65 mil­lion from Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank (CIB), at an in­ter­est rate of 12 per cent per an­num.

The CIB mort­gage agree­ment, which is avail­able on the web­site of the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry, in­di­cates that the loan was meant to be used for the con­struc­tion of 24 town­hous­es. The project al­so had a con­trac­tor’s all risk pol­i­cy in the amount of $14 mil­lion, which was is­sued by Bankers In­sur­ance.

CIB, which was part of the CL Fi­nan­cial group that col­lapsed in 2009, was placed in com­pul­so­ry liq­ui­da­tion by the De­posit In­sur­ance Cor­po­ra­tion in Oc­to­ber 2011. Olsen “ful­ly sat­is­fied” the out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ty on the loan in April 2021, ac­cord­ing to a Com­pa­nies Reg­istry fil­ing.

At the time of the sign­ing of the CIB mort­gage agree­ment, the sole share­hold­er of Saints De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny was Howard Webbe, de­scribed as a re­tired army of­fi­cer of Scar­bor­ough.

Olsen and his then-busi­ness part­ner Paul Glotzbeck­er be­came di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny in Sep­tem­ber 2006. Be­fore that date, the share­hold­ers and di­rec­tors of Saints De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny were Ian McLach­lan, a for­mer ex­ec­u­tive at An­gos­tu­ra, the rum and bit­ters com­pa­ny, and his wife.

In in­ter­views last week, Olsen dis­closed that he bought out Webbe and Glotzbeck­er.

In March 2021, Saints De­vel­op­ment en­tered in­to a project loan agree­ment with the Home Mort­gage Bank (HMB) for $65.81 mil­lion to re­pay the CIB debt in the amount of $6.58 mil­lion, to com­plete the in­fra­struc­ture works and con­struct 126 town­hous­es and pay pro­fes­sion­al fees of $59.23 mil­lion.

The HMB up­sized the 2021 loan with an ad­di­tion­al re­volv­ing loan fa­cil­i­ty of $45 mil­lion at sev­en per cent in­ter­est rate in Au­gust 2023.

In the first quar­ter of 2024, HMB and T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance were merged to be­come T&T Mort­gage Bank.

“I do want to shout out HMB, which is now TTMB. They have been our fi­nanc­ing part­ner since the be­gin­ning and they have been a good part­ner. They have worked with us and they con­tin­ue to work with us. They are our base fi­nanc­ing, though we are cur­rent­ly about to en­ter in­to fi­nanc­ing agree­ments go­ing for­ward with some of the oth­er play­ers, such as Guardian Hold­ings and ANSA Mer­chant Bank.”

The prop­er­ty de­vel­op­er is al­so in the process of nail­ing down the ben­e­fits that all ho­tel de­vel­op­ments are en­ti­tled to un­der T&T’s laws.

“The du­ty ex­emp­tions and tax-free ben­e­fits are sup­posed to be an as-of-right ben­e­fit that came un­der the 2000 Tourism Act. We are hap­pi­ly look­ing for­ward to work­ing with the new min­is­ter of tourism and the new fi­nance min­is­ter.

“We had sub­mit­ted ap­pli­ca­tions nu­mer­ous times in the past that just sat,” Olsen said, clar­i­fy­ing that they had sub­mit­ted the du­ty and tax-free ap­pli­ca­tions to min­is­ters in the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion “at least three, if not four times.”

The prop­er­ty de­vel­op­er said all of the ap­provals for the To­ba­go project were gen­er­at­ed in Trinidad.

“We have asked the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) for as­sis­tance on a cou­ple of small mat­ters and we are wait­ing to see fol­low through on that.

Asked why no mem­ber of the THA had spo­ken about the project be­fore the Hilton an­nounce­ment, Olsen said he could not un­der the THA’s si­lence on the Rox­bor­ough de­vel­op­ment be­cause he has met with THA chief sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine “nu­mer­ous times,” in­clud­ing at the To­ba­go day in Brook­lyn.

“I can’t an­swer that. You would have to ask him why. It’s been a kind of a se­cret all along. I don’t know whether they did not be­lieve that we were go­ing to do the Hilton fran­chise.

“We were orig­i­nal­ly go­ing to do a Choice Ho­tel As­cend Col­lec­tion fran­chise, but then the THA made a deal to buy an As­cend Col­lec­tion for the Man­ta Lodge in Spey­side. We did not feel com­fort­able with hav­ing two of the same fran­chis­es rough­ly sev­en miles apart and on to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent scales. So that’s why we ex­it­ed the Choice fran­chise. As­cend Col­lec­tion is quite a few steps low­er than the Ta­pes­try by Hilton fran­chise.

“And our con­cern was, if some­body made a reser­va­tion at the Man­ta Lodge for, say, US$400 a night and stopped at our prop­er­ty, which they would come to first of all, and we’d be say­ing, ‘No, you don’t have a reser­va­tion here. And by the way, the rate is US$800 a night.’ It was not go­ing to be a good sit­u­a­tion. Now whether the con­fu­sion about those fran­chis­es qui­et­ed the THA a lit­tle bit, I do not know the an­swer to that.”


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