Kali­fa Clyne

The Great Hall of Pres­i­dent's House re­sem­bles a war zone, as if a bomb went off, leav­ing a gap­ing hole in the mid­dle of a hall where pub­lic of­fi­cials were once sworn in to serve the coun­try.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is made the com­par­i­son to a bomb site as she peered over a wood­en bar­ri­er, con­struct­ed to keep peo­ple from top­pling about six feet in­to an open cav­i­ty.

The build­ing is emp­ty but for for­got­ten fur­ni­ture, Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions and a bro­ken pi­ano.In one aban­doned room, a glass sign for the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice was on the floor, sur­round­ed by fall­en bits of con­crete, paint that had flaked off walls and box­es of left over bits.

With the ex­cep­tion of nois­es made by bats, the set­ting pro­vides a still­ness in di­rect con­trast to the im­por­tance of past events held in the space years ear­li­er.Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley, who toured the house last week, said it was an ab­solute dis­grace.

The Pres­i­dent now con­ducts of­fi­cial swear­ing-ins and oth­er of­fi­cial cer­e­monies in a small of­fice in the first lev­el of the ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing.Robin­son-Reg­is, chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Noel Gar­cia and sev­er­al Ude­cott project man­agers and oth­er em­ploy­ees, led me­dia through a tour yes­ter­day of five his­tor­i­cal build­ings to be re­stored by Gov­ern­ment in the com­ing five years.

While Robin­son-Reg­is de­nounced the pri­or gov­ern­ment for not keep­ing promis­es re­gard­ing the restora­tion of the build­ings, she promised that the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment viewed the restora­tion of the build­ings as a pri­or­i­ty to take place with­in the next five years.

The cost to re­pair the five build­ings – Pres­i­dent's House, the Red House, White­hall, Stollmey­er's Cas­tle and Mille Fleurs – will cost Gov­ern­ment hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, with a sig­nif­i­cant chunk go­ing to­ward the Red House restora­tion.

Speak­ing to me­dia yes­ter­day, Robin­son-Reg­is said de­spite the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion the coun­try was in, hav­ing been de­clared to be in a re­ces­sion late last year, the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to spend mon­ey to fix the his­tor­i­cal prop­er­ties.

"If we don't do it now, it will get even worse, you saw Mille Fleurs. Mille Fleurs may have to even be de­mol­ished, giv­en the state that it is in and an­oth­er five years is go­ing to make it worse and it is go­ing to cost even more," Robin­son-Reg­is said.

Mille Fleurs, one of the mag­nif­i­cent sev­en build­ings around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, is near­ing cri­sis, cov­ered by a tem­po­rary gal­vanise roof to pro­tect it from the el­e­ments, the build­ing is crum­bling, with the floor rot­ted through in some parts.

Project man­agers for the build­ing said it may need to be com­plete­ly re­con­struct­ed.

Robin­son-Reg­is added: "It is im­por­tant that our her­itage be re­stored and even dur­ing a time of strin­gency there are some things that must be done and we feel cer­tain that this is very im­por­tant for our his­to­ry and for our peo­ple go­ing for­ward."She said she was sad­dened that noth­ing had been done to re­pair Pres­i­dent's House over the past five years.

Robin­son-Reg­is is a mem­ber of a restora­tion com­mit­tee es­tab­lished to over­see the restora­tion of the five build­ings.The com­mit­tee com­pris­es Row­ley, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.Robin­son-Reg­is said the com­mit­tee would de­ter­mine the even­tu­al use of the prop­er­ties and that would de­ter­mine how they were ren­o­vat­ed or re­stored.

The Red House re­mains the lo­ca­tion of Par­lia­ment. Plans to make Stollmey­er's Cas­tle a pro­to­col guest house are be­ing re­viewed and White­hall, once the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, may still be used as such.No de­ci­sion has been made on Mille Fleurs, which has re­main un­touched and un­oc­cu­pied for over 20 years.

Work on Stollmey­er's Cas­tle is 85 per cent com­plete, with most of the re­main­ing work be­ing ex­ter­nal.The Red House has been ex­ca­vat­ed but is still in ini­tial stages while at the Pres­i­dent's House no re­cent restora­tion has take place.

Gar­cia told re­porters the ma­jor prob­lem with White­hall was the roof, as the build­ing had re­ceived a $20 mil­lion restora­tion which was com­plet­ed in 1996.He said one of the sug­ges­tions Ude­cott would make to the com­mit­tee would be to ap­point a cu­ra­tor for each re­stored build­ing so that the State did not find it­self with the re­cur­ring prob­lem of hav­ing to re­store build­ings fre­quent­ly af­ter spend­ing tax­pay­ers mon­ey.

"We need to en­sure that the nec­es­sary main­te­nance is done," Gar­cia added.

Ar­chi­tect Bernard Mack­ay is work­ing with the State on the restora­tion of the build­ings.Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to give the pub­lic an up­date on the prop­er­ties in a press con­fer­ence to­mor­row.

Ini­tial project es­ti­mates

Last month, Ude­cott chair­man Noel Gar­cia said $110 mil­lion had al­ready been spent on the Red House and Gov­ern­ment would pump an ad­di­tion­al $400 mil­lion in­to the project.Gar­cia said to bring the project to a close, Ude­cott would in­ject a fur­ther $381 mil­lion on con­struc­tion of a Par­lia­men­tary Com­plex – phase two – tak­ing the to­tal fig­ure for the icon­ic build­ing to a whop­ping $891 mil­lion.

In 2012, then chair­man of the Na­tion­al Trust, Vel Lewis said the bud­get to re­store Mille Fleurs would be $32 mil­lion.That same year, then Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er said that the restora­tion of Pres­i­dent's House would be com­plet­ed by the end of 2013 and would cost $4.5 mil­lion.

By 2013, Zan­im Ali, di­rec­tor of the min­istry's Restora­tion Unit, said the fig­ure for the re­pairs would be over $100 mil­lion.Stollmey­er's Cas­tle, al­so called Kil­lar­ney, is 85 per cent com­plete with the on­ly ex­ter­nal work and the up­stairs bal­cony left to be com­plet­ed.