Kali­fa Clyne

Re­ports that the Greyfri­ars Church of Scot­land on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, was be­ing de­mol­ished on Tues­day are false, says the own­er, Al­fred Galy.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day at his Fred­er­ick Street of­fice, Galy said every­body had "jumped the gun" and said the build­ing was be­ing de­mol­ished but he was still wait­ing for an en­gi­neer's re­port to de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the prop­er­ty.

Galy did not rule out de­mo­li­tion but said if the en­gi­neer's re­port in­di­cat­ed the struc­ture was good and could be fixed, he was will­ing to fix it.

A crew of work­men who ap­peared to be do­ing de­mo­li­tion work was told to stop and va­cate the premis­es on Tues­day be­cause they were op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly.The stop-work or­der was de­liv­ered just af­ter noon by the chief build­ing in­spec­tor at the City En­gi­neer's Of­fice, De­o­raj Ram­ta­hal.

Galy said all work had stopped but added he would no­ti­fy the cor­po­ra­tion so that work could con­tin­ue.

Asked what kind of work was be­ing done which re­quired the roof of the ad­ja­cent church hall to be re­moved, Galy said the build­ing was be­ing as­sessed and that was part of the process.

"The roof was tox­ic. Imag­ine a tox­ic, as­bestos-filled roof in the city," he added.

He said he would have an en­gi­neer look at the build­ing and a re­port would be com­plet­ed about a week lat­er.

"If the en­gi­neer's re­port says the prob­lems with the build­ing can be reme­died then we will rem­e­dy it, but if not, I am look­ing at all of the op­tions," he said.

There were no work­ers at the site yes­ter­day and the yard was full of pieces of wood pried from the roof, so the in­te­ri­or of the church hall was ex­posed to the el­e­ments.

The church, which is 176 years old, was ren­o­vat­ed in the past but the Church of Scot­land was un­able to main­tain it and it has been closed for sev­er­al years. It was de­con­se­crat­ed be­fore be­ing sold to Galy this year.

Af­ter re­ports of the sale there were calls for the build­ing to be pre­served, com­ing from groups, such as Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion and his­to­ri­an and T&T Guardian colum­nist An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh.

But Galy said change was in­evitable and point­ed out that de­spite all the re­ports in the me­dia over the fu­ture of the prop­er­ty, no one had ap­proached him for a meet­ing about which di­rec­tion plan­ning for it should take.

"They talk to the news­pa­pers but no­body has ap­proached me and I am will­ing to lis­ten to sen­si­ble sug­ges­tions," he added.

No Na­tion­al Trust in place

There are plans for Greyfri­ars to be list­ed as a his­tor­i­cal site by the Na­tion­al Trust.

But the Na­tion­al Trust does not, at the mo­ment, have a func­tion­ing board. Though one was ap­point­ed by Cab­i­net last week it is not ex­pect­ed to be in­stalled un­til next week.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion Rodger Samuel said Greyfri­ars was go­ing through the process of be­ing list­ed and pro­tect­ed as such, along with oth­er sim­i­lar build­ings.

"We con­tin­ue to work on get­ting it list­ed but it is a long process and it has to go through the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs," said Samuel.

Asked if any spe­cial at­ten­tion was be­ing giv­en to the build­ing, he said the process had al­ready start­ed and en­sur­ing the build­ing was added to a list of his­toric build­ings un­der the Na­tion­al Trust was a pri­or­i­ty.

Pressed fur­ther, Samuel said he would be meet­ing with staff at his min­istry to dis­cuss fu­ture in­ter­ven­tions.

He added: "We were there yes­ter­day when the city cor­po­ra­tion is­sued a stop no­tice to the own­er. We are aware that there were plans to make Wood­ford Square a her­itage block and we are work­ing tremen­dous­ly hard to find a so­lu­tion."

The pro­posed her­itage block will in­clude the Red House, which has been await­ing ren­o­va­tions for ap­prox­i­mate­ly a decade, the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing for­mer li­brary and the Trin­i­ty Cathe­dral.

In its 23 years of ex­is­tence, the Na­tion­al Trust has giv­en 15 build­ings pro­tect­ed sta­tus, with a list of over 430 build­ings wait­ing to be added.