It cur­rent­ly seems un­like­ly that the Wit­co Des­per­a­does will get a chance to de­fend their Panora­ma large band ti­tle next year, but they will ex­pect to be set­tled in a new Pa­n­yard in East Port-of-Spain in 2021.

The his­toric band’s new pro­posed home, which oc­cu­pies 1.35 acres be­tween George and Nel­son Streets, was toured yes­ter­day by Port- of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land along with Des­per­a­does man­ag­er Dr Fin­bar Fletch­er, band mem­bers, and UDe­Cott of­fi­cials.

“It is now the new head­quar­ters of Wit­co Des­per­a­does. The site in its com­plet­ed for­mat will be about 1.35 acres which is about 12 res­i­den­tial lots. What is en­vi­sioned by the ar­chi­tect who we spoke to and this was in con­sul­ta­tion with Des­pers’ hi­er­ar­chy,” said Scot­land.

“We have a nine-month pe­ri­od from start to fin­ish, the chair­man has re­quest­ed and the cap­tain of Des­pers has re­quest­ed that next panora­ma be­cause we know if things stay as it is, we will be hav­ing no panora­ma in 2021 but in 2022 he wants to have this up and run­ning so that when the judges vis­it the Pa­n­yard they will be vis­it­ing here,” the Port-of -pain MP ex­plained.

The project, which has al­ready start­ed, is ex­pect­ed to cost an es­ti­mat­ed $14 mil­lion.

It will bring a set­tled home to Des­per­a­does who opt­ed to leave their tra­di­tion Laven­tille pa­n­yard over a decade ago due to crime and safe­ty con­cerns.

Fletch­er said he was pleased with the plans ex­plained to him.

“I feel good about it, we know the lim­i­ta­tions be­cause due to the COVID de­layed the start and so. But ac­cord­ing to the plans laid out by Ude­Cott, I think it’s ide­al for the band, it gives us what we want be­cause in terms of space,” he said, while he reaf­firmed that this new head­quar­ters did not mean the band was leav­ing Laven­tille for good.

“The band will al­ways be a Laven­tille band. No mat­ter what and we keep the space in Laven­tille, this space we plan to use among oth­er things as a com­mer­cial cen­tre,” said Fletch­er

The pa­n­yard will al­so ac­com­mo­date a pub­lic car park.

“One of the first things that the rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing project would be the car park, apart from that we’d have a com­mer­cial Cen­tre space where we’d have restau­rants and you’d have spots, con­ces­sion­aires for rent­ing. Where we would have some of it for Des­per­a­does mer­chan­dise or mer­chan­dis­ing,” said Fletch­er, who al­so ex­plained the group was still hop­ing to cel­e­brate its 2020 Panora­ma suc­cess with a vir­tu­al con­cert.

“Like every­one else we have to reimag­ine or re­think how we do things both in the short run of this pe­ri­od and in the long run. For ex­am­ple one of the things we are plan­ning to do in the up­com­ing sea­son is a ma­jor vir­tu­al con­cert be­cause af­ter win­ning panora­ma in 2020, we haven’t re­al­ly done any­thing, we haven’t re­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed as we should so we plan to do some vir­tu­al cel­e­bra­tion to­ward the end of the year,” Fletch­er said.

Scot­land said the pa­n­yard was just one of the plans to re­vi­talise East Port-of-Spain.