For decades, the City of Port of Spain has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing con­sid­er­able ur­ban de­cay. This con­di­tion has man­i­fest­ed it­self in a myr­i­ad of chal­lenges such as re­duced pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, de­pop­u­la­tion, aban­don­ment and de­crepit in­fra­struc­ture, un­em­ploy­ment, des­ti­tu­tion and high lev­els of crime.

Up­on as­sum­ing of­fice in 2015 the des­ig­na­tion of a Cab­i­net port­fo­lio as the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment sig­nalled an in­ten­tion to tack­le this and sim­i­lar prob­lems.

In or­der to over­come the ad­verse con­di­tions as men­tioned, it is im­per­a­tive that the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go em­bark up­on a pro­gramme of ur­ban re­vi­tal­iza­tion. This pro­gramme would im­prove and re­ha­bil­i­tate the Cap­i­tal City, re­store its life and vi­bran­cy, im­prove traf­fic cir­cu­la­tion, en­hance prop­er­ty val­ues, dis­cour­age crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, un­lock pri­vate cap­i­tal and stim­u­late the econ­o­my.

Be­tween 1968 and 2015, six­teen plans have been de­vel­oped and have in­clud­ed the up­grad­ing of cul­tur­al spaces, de­vel­op­ment of prime re­al es­tate for res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial spaces, up­grad­ing of key in­fra­struc­tures such as roads and drainage to al­le­vi­ate traf­fic and flood­ing is­sues. Im­prove­ments are cur­rent­ly un­der­way in the Health Care Ser­vices in the city with the re­de­vel­op­ment of the Cen­tral Block at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Al­so, on­go­ing and sub­stan­tial­ly com­plet­ed is the restora­tion and up­grade of the his­tor­i­cal restora­tion of ar­chi­tec­tur­al trea­sures such as The Red House, which hous­es the Par­lia­ment of the Re­pub­lic, Kil­lar­ney (Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle), White­hall (Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice), Mille Fleur (Na­tion­al Trust), QRC, and of course, Pres­i­dent House. We have al­so re­lo­cat­ed the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture from Queens Park West to Ch­agua­nas. This has al­lowed ren­o­va­tion and up­grade of those premis­es ad­ja­cent to Wild­flower Park which to­day house the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs in el­e­gant ac­ces­si­ble sur­round­ings. All of these much-need­ed ac­com­plish­ments give the city a much-need­ed facelift.

In ad­di­tion to the work done as I have just out­lined, Cab­i­net al­so agreed that:

(a) In ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act, Gov­ern­ment (viz. the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter) en­ter in­to a con­tract with the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (UDe­COTT) to be ap­point­ed for the fol­low­ing:

to de­vel­op a mas­ter plan for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port of Spain by iden­ti­fy­ing projects in both pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor which would stim­u­late de­vel­op­ment in the Cap­i­tal City;

to act as clear­ing house and/or cat­a­lyst for all de­vel­op­men­tal projects iden­ti­fied in the mas­ter plan

iii. to en­ter in­to Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) Arrange­ments with de­vel­op­ers for im­ple­men­ta­tion of projects at State-owned prop­er­ties lo­cat­ed at Keate Street (owned by UDe­COTT) and Wright­son Road (Pow­er­gen) which is owned by the State;

to take steps to sen­si­tize the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers for the above-men­tioned ini­tia­tives; and

to iden­ti­fy and im­ple­ment pri­or­i­ty projects to kick-start the Re­vi­tal­iza­tion Pro­gramme.

(b) Pri­or to en­ter­ing in­to any project un­der the arrange­ment re­ferred to here, UDe­COTT sub­mit a spe­cif­ic pro­pos­al to Cab­i­net for ap­proval.

The Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port of Spain Project will be ex­e­cut­ed by UDe­COTT in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

The ob­jec­tive of this Spot­light on Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment is to en­gage ac­tive di­a­logue with all ma­jor stake­hold­ers, which in­clude Gov­ern­ment De­part­ments, Mer­chants/ Busi­ness lead­ers, Busi­ness Cham­bers, Acad­e­mia, NGOs and most im­por­tant­ly, the res­i­dent and vis­i­tor pop­u­la­tion, to so­lic­it feed­back on the Mas­ter Plan for the city of Port of Spain.

The Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the City of Port of Spain Project has been es­tab­lished to ad­vance the im­age of Port of Spain as a 21st cen­tu­ry city, to im­prove lo­cal eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty and to pro­vide a qual­i­ty en­vi­ron­ment for res­i­dents, lo­cal vis­i­tors and in­ter­na­tion­al tourists.

Fur­ther to this man­date, UDe­COTT en­gaged the firm of NL­BA Ar­chi­tects Lim­it­ed to un­der­take:

Re­view of the pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­ment plans for Port of Spain;

Analy­sis of cur­rent con­di­tions in and around Port of Spain;

De­vel­op­ment of a con­cep­tu­al mas­ter plan for the Re­vi­tal­iza­tion of Port of Spain;

De­vel­op­ment of a Pre­sen­ta­tion for Pub­lic Con­sul­ta­tions which be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2019;

Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Pri­or­i­ty Projects in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor that would stim­u­late this de­vel­op­ment and could com­mence in the short term;

Fi­nal­iza­tion of the mas­ter plan; and

Pro­vi­sion of im­ple­men­ta­tion plan for the Re­vi­tal­iza­tion of Port of Spain on a phased ba­sis.

Un­like oth­ers who be­lieve that some kind of “de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion” pol­i­cy which stim­u­lates the sus­tained de­cay of the cap­i­tal city is en­light­ened de­vel­op­ment, this Gov­ern­ment be­lieves that the cap­i­tal city of our na­tion is a ma­jor eco­nom­ic en­gine which, if oiled and main­tained will cre­ate in­creased op­por­tu­ni­ty and ben­e­fit for a wide cross sec­tion of the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.

The Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port of Spain is a vi­tal project of the Gov­ern­ment’s thrust to fos­ter and stim­u­late in­te­grat­ed na­tion­al growth. The Mas­ter Plan for the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port of Spain will iden­ti­fy pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment projects that fo­cus on pro­mot­ing, res­i­den­tial, tourism, en­ter­tain­ment, recre­ation­al, com­mer­cial, ed­u­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties. In ad­di­tion, fo­cus will be placed on the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture, trans­porta­tion net­works and oth­er ser­vices which are de­sir­able to en­sure suc­cess of the Re­vi­tal­iza­tion of Port of Spain.

In fur­ther­ance of this, UDe­COTT in­vit­ed key stake­hold­ers to a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion held at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza Au­di­to­ri­um on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2019. A con­cep­tu­al mas­ter plan was pre­sent­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly two hun­dred and twen­ty (220) at­ten­dees and stake­hold­ers were giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide in­put in­to the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Mas­ter Plan for these projects in the City.

In or­der to en­sure that thor­ough ex­am­i­na­tion of each pri­or­i­ty area was un­der­tak­en, fo­cus groups were de­vel­oped to dis­cuss and re­ceive feed­back from rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers about the pri­or­i­ty de­vel­op­men­tal ar­eas in the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the City of Port of Spain. Fo­cus Group meet­ings were held at UDe­COTT’s Head Of­fice in No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber, 2019 and mod­er­at­ed by ex­perts in the dif­fer­ent fields. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly fif­teen (15) stake­hold­ers were in­vit­ed to each meet­ing based on their at­ten­dance at the Pub­lic Con­sul­ta­tion and the na­ture of their in­volve­ment in Port of Spain. De­tailed re­ports were pre­pared by the ex­pert mod­er­a­tors of each group.

The crit­i­cal mat­ters dis­cussed were used by the Con­sul­tant to in­form and fi­nalise the mas­ter plan for the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port of Spain Project.

The Fi­nal Re­port for Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port of Spain was sub­mit­ted by the Con­sul­tant to UDe­COTT on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2020. The Re­port presents the mas­ter plan which ad­dress­es the so­cial and eco­nom­ic gaps which can stim­u­late the pri­vate sec­tor to get more in­volved in the de­vel­op­ment of Port of Spain. It al­so en­vi­sions that re­form by the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion will al­low strate­gic de­vel­op­ment with on­ly sen­si­ble con­straints on height, den­si­ty and build­ing cov­er­age.

In this re­gard, the Fi­nal Re­port rec­om­mends that Town and Coun­try codes be ap­plied to a reg­u­lat­ing line and not a zone. Thus, the theme ‘The City of Fes­ti­vals’ can be as­signed to the reg­u­lat­ing line, in an ef­fort to catal­yse and main­tain year-round ac­tiv­i­ty by bring­ing life and fes­ti­vals back to the City.

The mas­ter plan iden­ti­fies the fol­low­ing projects as cat­a­lyst projects to be im­ple­ment­ed via Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ships (PPP) for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion ef­forts:

(i) Memo­r­i­al Plaza De­vel­op­ment

—De­vel­op­ment of the UDe­COTT-owned prop­er­ty lo­cat­ed at Keate Street and south of Memo­r­i­al Block to house a Mixed-Use Com­plex in­clu­sive of res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, of­fice, park­ing and recre­ation­al spaces

(ii) De­vel­op­ment of the Sal­va­tori Site

— This project is in the plan­ning stage of de­vel­op­ment

(iii) Pic­cadil­ly Street De­vel­op­ment

—This project is be­fore the Cab­i­net for ap­proval for UDe­COTT to pro­ceed with an RFP and de­ter­mi­na­tion of the fund­ing source

(iv) Pow­er­Gen Site De­vel­op­ment

—De­vel­op­ment of the stat­ed-owned, for­mer site of the Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion Com­pa­ny lo­cat­ed at Wright­son Road

(v) City Gate De­vel­op­ment

—A con­cept is to be de­vel­oped for the re­vi­tal­iza­tion of City Gate

(vi) Fore­shore Green space

—This project would in­clude the ex­pan­sion of green ar­eas in­volv­ing land recla­ma­tion at the Fore­shore at Mu­cu­rapo

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Mas­ter Plan rec­om­mends:

(i) That a de­fined list of in­cen­tives be de­vel­oped for all Stake­hold­ers, De­vel­op­ers, Fi­nanciers and Pur­chasers/ Users that are tax-based; and

(ii) That a step-by-step process of ad­dress­ing the drainage sys­tem for the City, in terms of ca­pac­i­ty, clean­ing, out­lets to the sea and in­tro­duc­tion of re­ten­tion and de­ten­tion ponds at the foothills of the north­ern Range, be de­vel­oped.

In or­der to suc­cess­ful­ly un­der­take these de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives, rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers are be­ing in­formed of the sta­tus of the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Port of Spain Project and en­gaged to re­li­ably ef­fect change and stim­u­late dis­cus­sions via the Spot­light on Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment. In ad­di­tion, pre­sen­ta­tions with key stake­hold­ers such as In­vesTT, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Town and Coun­try Di­vi­sion and the Min­istry of Tourism, to name a few, will be sched­uled there­after.

All over the world and through­out his­to­ry cities have arisen, have been nur­tured, have grown and some­times they stag­nate and die. The city of Port of Spain is the cap­i­tal of our na­tion, po­ten­tial­ly vi­brant and full of eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties in a bright fu­ture if we do what needs to be done to give it life and pro­tec­tion from de­cay and ne­glect, re­plac­ing these neg­a­tives with sen­si­ble vi­sion­ary plans, in­vest­ments and care. To­day’s ex­er­cise is a com­mit­ment to stim­u­late and save our cap­i­tal city. Let’s do it.