The re­moval of Kelvin Charles as Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly be­fore his term in of­fice was com­plete and his de­feat to Tra­cy David­son Ce­les­tine as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM’s To­ba­go Coun­cil are be­ing blamed for a failed at­tempt by in­vestors to take over the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel and turn it in­to a ma­jor dive re­sort on the is­land.

“I be­lieve they were more con­cerned at the time with their po­lit­i­cal ca­reers giv­en it was dur­ing the time when Tra­cy David­son came in­to the pic­ture from Cos­ta Ri­ca to throw Kelvin Charles out of of­fice due to lack of con­fi­dence,” ex­plained Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Fabi­an Vin­cent NAMM Ad­vi­sors Group.

NAMM Ad­vi­sors Group was a group of in­vestors who were seek­ing to get the ho­tel off the ground which was lay­ing idle for years, gath­er­ing rust, af­ter it was con­tro­ver­sial­ly pur­chased in 2015 by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly when David­son-Ce­les­tine was the then Tourism Sec­re­tary and Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary. To date the ho­tel is still not op­er­a­tional and mil­lions of tax­pay­ers dol­lars have been spent on its ac­qui­si­tion, se­cu­ri­ty and re­cent­ly works to bring it in­to op­er­a­tion.

Since the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s  ac­qui­si­tion of the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel in 2015, there have con­tin­ued to be ques­tions about the Dive Ho­tel’s fu­ture and the wis­dom of the pur­chase by the THA.

Those ques­tions re­mained large­ly went unan­swered un­til ear­li­er this year when Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis fi­nal­ly con­firmed work had be­gun at the con­tentious fa­cil­i­ty af­ter many years of stag­na­tion.

How­ev­er doc­u­ments which have sur­faced sug­gest there were plans to start work on the ho­tel dat­ing as far back as 2019.
The doc­u­ments in­clud­ed a mem­o­ran­dums of un­der­stand­ing be­tween the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and NAMM Ad­vi­sors Group,which was re­vised three times be­tween March 2019 and Sep­tem­ber 2019.

De­spite the nu­mer­ous re­vi­sions, each of the MOU’s stat­ed a clear goal, the re­de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of Man­ta Lodge, sit­u­at­ed at Spey­side in the is­land of To­ba­go.

It read, “The client (The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) is de­sirous for the re­de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of the es­tab­lish­ment, known as Man­ta Lodge, sit­u­at­ed at Spey­side in the is­land of To­ba­go. The client in con­junc­tion with the de­vel­op­er wish­es to fa­cil­i­tate through our pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ship, the re­de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of the Man­ta Lodge which in­cludes but is not lim­it­ed to the ex­pan­sion of ad­di­tion­al rooms and hos­pi­tal­i­ty ameni­ties, con­struc­tion of a Ma­rine Jet­ty with the op­tion of a boat fu­elling fa­cil­i­ty, state of the art wa­ter treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty and new beach fa­cil­i­ty for the Man­ta lodge guests to­geth­er with the pub­lic at large.”

The last of the three MOUs con­firmed that NAMM had suc­cess­ful­ly con­vinced the THA that it  in­deed pos­sessed the “pro­fes­sion­al skill and ex­pe­ri­ence, per­son­nel and tech­ni­cal re­sources to­geth­er with the ex­per­tise in deal­ing with com­plex fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions,” to take on the project.

NAMM al­so ac­cept­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to the MOU that it would pro­cure the fi­nanc­ing “to­wards a project notwith­stand­ing that on­ly a pre­lim­i­nary pro­pos­al has been sub­mit­ted to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly”

That MOU how­ev­er called on them “to pro­vide a thor­ough and de­tailed project plan, which is to be sub­mit­ted on or be­fore No­vem­ber 30 2019.”

Fur­ther the MOU sought to con­firm NAMM and THA would “es­tab­lish a col­lab­o­ra­tive work­ing re­la­tion­ship among the par­ties to achieve the com­mon goal that is col­lat­ing in­for­ma­tion to­wards the re­de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of the prop­er­ty known as Man­ta Lodge.”

NAMM al­so agreed to  “en­gage in a project con­sult­ing team com­pris­ing tech­nocrats to be ap­point­ed from the THA to­geth­er with ex­per­tise from the de­vel­op­ers team to gar­ner pre-de­vel­op­ment in­for­ma­tion, which could in­clude but not lim­it­ed to de­signs, as­sess­ment of the site and site plan­ning, req­ui­site per­mits and ap­provals. Pro­vide a de­tailed briefed in­clude ap­pro­pri­ate method­olo­gies, ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­signs and draw­ings to­geth­er with the scope of works among oth­er things, pro­vide doc­u­ments on this pro­cure­ment tech­niques to en­sure it is com­pat­i­ble with pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures of Trinidad and To­ba­go, pro­vide the name or names of the lend­ing sources when they be­come avail­able, but with­in a rea­son­ably ac­cept­ed time.”

Giv­en that such an agree­ment was in place over two years ago, what hap­pened be­tween then and now?

This was a ques­tion raised by Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots Far­ley Au­gus­tine on nom­i­na­tion day for the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Elec­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to Far­ley, “I un­der­stand that the THA un­der Kelvin Charles had ac­tu­al­ly signed a MOU with a group of To­ba­go busi­ness­men so that they would have done all the work and spend the mon­ey and in­vest it in the ho­tel. As soon as Tra­cy kick him out of of­fice, plans changed and the THA is now spend­ing the mon­ey on Man­ta Lodge.”

 THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis con­firmed to the Busi­ness Guardian that the cur­rent work be­ing at the Man­ta Lodge was be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, with work on the site ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35 per cent com­plete with an es­ti­mat­ed com­ple­tion date of Feb­ru­ary 2022.

He stat­ed that al­most three mil­lion dol­lars had been ex­pend­ed on the project to date.

In his cor­re­spon­dence, there was no men­tion of NAMM Ad­vi­sors.

When asked about the MOUs which were signed by the THA in 2019, Den­nis asked for a copy of the doc­u­ments to be sent to him to ver­i­fy its va­lid­i­ty.  How­ev­er up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion, he had not sent a re­sponse con­cern­ing the doc­u­ment or ex­plained what be­came of the pur­port­ed agree­ment.

For­mer Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles how­ev­er did con­firm to the Busi­ness Guardian, that there had been an agree­ment reached with the THA con­cern­ing the re­de­vel­op­ment and re­fur­bish­ment of the Spey­side Dive Ho­tel.

How­ev­er he too could not say what be­came of the agree­ment, as he stressed that what­ev­er de­ci­sion con­cern­ing  cur­rent work on the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel came af­ter he re­signed as Chief Sec­re­tary in April 2020. Con­fir­ma­tion that work was fi­nal­ly on the way at the ho­tel came one year lat­er.

Vin­cent, who is based in Las Ve­gas told the Busi­ness Guardian, “The MOU ex­pired due to lack of re­sponse from the THA, they nev­er re­spond­ed to us af­ter we made our full pre­sen­ta­tion to Kelvin Charles and Kwe­si De­Vi­gnes, they just dropped the ball with no fur­ther com­mu­ni­ca­tions, af­ter we spend so much time and mon­ey to en­sure that we had every­thing in place to move for­ward.”

Vin­cent, who was born in Bloody Bay, To­ba­go and has carved out a ca­reer in the fi­nan­cial space for over 40 years, ex­plained that NAMM sub­mit­ted nu­mer­ous pre­sen­ta­tions and pro­pos­als.

“ It was a lot in­clud­ing pre­sen­ta­tion ma­te­ri­als, 3D videos, de­sign el­e­ments in­clud­ing both ex­te­ri­or and in­te­ri­or etc Ar­chi­tec­tur­al, trav­el from the US etc,” he said

How­ev­er he stat­ed that all progress came to a halt once Charles left of­fice.
 Vin­cent be­lieved the MOU was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to make good on its promise to en­cour­age for­eign in­vest­ment with­in the THA.

The Spey­side ho­tel, along with the Sanc­tu­ary Vil­las in Black­rock were ac­quired by the THA for $32 mil­lion dol­lars. The pur­chas­es were heav­i­ly crit­i­cised, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it came to light that these prop­er­ties were bought by the THA with­out  any prop­er fea­si­bil­i­ty study be­ing done.

To com­pound mat­ters, the THA con­tin­ued to in­cur ex­pens­es for Man­ta Lodge and Sanc­tu­ary Vil­las for oc­ca­sion­al main­te­nance and se­cu­ri­ty of the fa­cil­i­ties, all while nei­ther of these pieces of re­al es­tate earned any rev­enue for the THA as they have both not host­ed a guest since be­ing ac­quired.