PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The re­cent and rapid rise in busi­ness de­vel­op­ment in the San Juan area has pleased MP for the area Sad­dam Ho­sein.

Ho­sein, while speak­ing at the rib­bon cut­ting for the new Raw Fit­ness Health Club at Icon Plaza in Aranguez South, hailed the new shop­ping area as a “mile­stone mo­ment” and “land­mark de­vel­op­ment” in San Juan.

“I re­mem­ber when this plaza was go­ing up, I said, I won­der when it will be opened, and it did in record-break­ing speed.

“We must con­grat­u­late all of the di­rec­tors and own­ers of Icon Plaza for mak­ing this par­tic­u­lar fa­cil­i­ty one of land­mark fa­cil­i­ties right here in San Juan. They could have cho­sen any oth­er part of Trinidad and To­ba­go but they have cho­sen San Juan, which means that San Juan is open for busi­ness,” said Ho­sein.

In the past three years, El So­cor­ro and Aranguez South have seen sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment with the open­ing of Xtra Foods Plaza, Gar­den Park, Aranguez Food Park, The Forge Kitchen Stu­dio, the new DHL of­fice as well as the re­cent re­fur­bish­ment of the Courts Mega­s­tore.

Ho­sein said the de­ci­sion by Raw Fit­ness to choose San Juan as its newest lo­ca­tion was al­so a tes­ta­ment to the area’s busi­ness po­ten­tial.

Raw Fit­ness, which is part of the Edan K Prop­er­ties group, had pre­vi­ous­ly opened two lo­ca­tions in Trinidad in Gas­par­il­lo and Brent­wood, Ch­agua­nas, re­spec­tive­ly. The brand has al­so opened a lo­ca­tion in Bar­ba­dos.

“I’m now told that you are ex­pand­ing re­gion­al­ly, and that shows how strong the brand is and how strong the com­pa­ny is, and that is very im­por­tant to have such an im­por­tant brand right here in this area of San Juan,” said the MP for Barataria/San Juan, adding that with the rapid de­vel­op­ment in the area, there were oth­er is­sues that need­ed to be ad­dressed.

‘Of course, we have some chal­lenges with traf­fic and so on. Those are mat­ters that we are look­ing to­wards. I have been in dis­cus­sion with the Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Min­is­ter Jear­lean John to as­sist with some of those traf­fic chal­lenges in the area,” said Ho­sein.

Ho­sein al­so stressed that the fa­cil­i­ty was al­so a cru­cial fac­tor in ad­dress­ing men­tal health con­cerns.

He said, “As some­one in pub­lic life, we are met with a lot of stress on a dai­ly ba­sis. We meet many peo­ple with many is­sues, and some­times you just need an hour or so for your­self for the day, just to es­cape. In place that you call a gym, that fa­cil­i­ty gives you that es­cape. So rather than this just be­ing a fa­cil­i­ty for phys­i­cal well-be­ing and health de­vel­op­ment, you man­age de­vel­op­ment, the man­ag­er right­ly point­ed out that it’s al­so an area where you can deal with your men­tal health.

“While you may not have fo­cussed on those is­sues five, six years ago, it’s a very im­por­tant is­sue, es­pe­cial­ly for young peo­ple who face the stress­es of dai­ly life.”

This point was al­so high­light­ed by Raw Fit­ness Di­rec­tor Nyal Khan, who said he had long stressed the brand was not just a gym, but a well­ness club that would host events which catered to men­tal well­be­ing in ad­di­tion to phys­i­cal train­ing.