Yvonne Ba­boolal

The Star­wood Ho­tel Group, own­ers of the Sher­a­ton chain of ho­tels, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi have stepped in­to the com­pe­ti­tion for pre­mi­um prop­er­ty at In­vaders Bay in west Port-of-Spain. The ma­jor over­seas in­vestors, who said they got the go-ahead for their project un­der the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, fear they are now get­ting a cold shoul­der from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, but are vow­ing not to give up the fight.

M Fal­con Group Ltd, a lo­cal­ly­formed com­pa­ny, com­pris­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi's Miller School of Med­i­cine, de­vel­op­ers Bizzi Group, based in Italy, and the Ar­jo­mand Group, from the oil-rich Mid­dle East, has sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment to con­struct the Sher­a­ton Colum­bus Tow­ers at In­vaders Bay. A med­ical tourism fa­cil­i­ty, the project will com­prise three tow­ers for a can­cer cen­tre, a 300-room ho­tel and a res­i­dence com­plex on 12 acres of land. Con­struc­tion costs have been es­ti­mat­ed at US$300 mil­lion.

The plan is ex­pect­ed to go be­fore Cab­i­net to­day but, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the Fal­con Group, things are not look­ing too bright. "We heard that be­cause we don't have any lo­cal peo­ple in­volved, we don't re­al­ly have a lob­by. We heard that's not how things work here," the state­ment added. The pro­pos­al is one of sev­er­al sub­mit­ted to the Gov­ern­ment for the In­vaders Bay De­vel­op­ment Project. One in­volves the ex­pan­sion of Movi­eTowne, owned by lo­cal busi­ness­man Derek Chin. His pro­pos­al is al­so be­fore Cab­i­net and there is con­cern he is be­ing favoured by the Gov­ern­ment. In­vaders Bay com­pris­es 192 acres of land and Chin is ask­ing for 20 acres.

The source said M Fal­con Group, com­pris­ing all the for­eign play­ers, was cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the In­vaders Bay project. Not­ing it has been four years since it be­gan seek­ing ap­proval for the project, the source said Fal­con was ap­proached by lo­cal in­vestors, but it was agreed there should be no lo­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion. "The group com­pris­es for­eign groups that are pub­licly trad­ed with very so­phis­ti­cat­ed op­er­a­tions. They pre­fer to be in a mix they are fa­mil­iar with," the source ex­plained.

It is un­der­stood that the group has al­ready in­ter­viewed Gene­va Con­struc­tion, a French-based com­pa­ny that un­der­took the Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front Project, to build the Sher­a­ton Colum­bus Tow­ers. Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse, Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie, with whom Fal­con has been com­mu­ni­cat­ing about their project, said: "All rec­om­mend­ed in­vestors were put through a due-dili­gence process ini­ti­at­ed by an in­tra-dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by Cab­i­net to en­gage the rec­om­mend­ed in­vestors. "Any de­ci­sion go­ing for­ward will be de­ter­mined by Cab­i­net on the ba­sis of the due-dili­gence re­port." Tewarie said he was not in a po­si­tion to com­ment on any in­di­vid­ual in­vest­ment.

He al­so said he had not re­ceived a let­ter from Re­pub­lic Bank, dat­ed Ju­ly 24, 2012, stat­ing it is ea­ger to fi­nance Fal­con's project. He al­so said he did not get a let­ter from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, al­so dat­ed Ju­ly 24, re­con­firm­ing its in­ter­est in the project. How­ev­er, the group pro­vid­ed copies of the let­ters to the T&T Guardian. The Fal­con source said the group was plan­ning to "fight to the end" for In­vaders Bay. "Af­ter four years we are not about to quit so eas­i­ly," he added. He said all plans were in place to start con­struc­tion im­me­di­ate­ly. List­ing the ways the lo­cal econ­o­my would ben­e­fit from Fal­con's project, the group's pro­pos­al said hun­dreds of lo­cals would be em­ployed dur­ing and af­ter con­struc­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly they say the val­ue of sur­round­ing land would triple overnight and lure in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors who would not have pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered T&T, the group claimed.

Trac­ing the start of the fight, the T&T Guardian was told in Sep­tem­ber 2008, un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, the group iden­ti­fied T&T as a strate­gic lo­ca­tion for med­ical tourism. The main rea­sons were that most of the cus­tomers of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi came from Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca and T&T stood out in the Caribbean as fi­nan­cial­ly sta­ble in bank­ing and there was a re­al need for an on­col­o­gy cen­tre, the source said.

(The Gov­ern­ment an­nounced last June its plan to build a na­tion­al on­col­o­gy cen­tre by 2014. The pri­vate­ly- owned Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre be­came em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy af­ter it was al­leged that ra­di­a­tion over­dos­es had been ad­min­is­tered to 218 pa­tients). Ac­cord­ing to Fal­con's pro­pos­al, can­cer is a lead­ing cause of mor­tal­i­ty in T&T. "We iden­ti­fied a large in­flux of peo­ple com­ing from T&T to Mi­a­mi for med­ical care," the source said. When the group came it pre­sent­ed the pro­pos­al for In­vaders Bay to the then gov­ern­ment, and its prime min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning.

They were told In­vaders Bay land fell un­der the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) at the time and no project could go for­ward be­cause of an en­quiry in­to the state en­ter­prise. In 2009, Fal­con ap­proached the gov­ern­ment again but was told they were busy with the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Con­fer­ence and the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, host­ed by T&T. "We were fly­ing to T&T every three months," the source added. In March 2010, the mat­ter went be­fore Cab­i­net and a note was passed giv­ing the okay for Fal­con to ne­go­ti­ate for the land, the source said.

"With­in two weeks Man­ning called the elec­tion and they lost," he said. Fal­con then met with for­mer Plan­ning Min­is­ter Mary King in the new Gov­ern­ment. "She said they were very in­ter­est­ed but need­ed time, since they were new," the source added. In De­cem­ber 2010, Fal­con was in­vit­ed to present its pro­pos­al to 30 mem­bers of Cab­i­net. "We were told they would get back to us in ten days. Then King was fired." When they met Tewarie, his po­si­tion was that the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to be fair to every­body and in­ter­est­ed par­ties should sub­mit his pack­age through the pub­lic ten­der­ing process, the source said.

He added: "We did so and in De­cem­ber 2011 got a let­ter stat­ing we were one of three com­pa­nies which met the re­quired cri­te­ria. "Price Wa­ter­house did a due-dili­gence process with us in April and we were told that with­in one week the Gov­ern­ment would get back to us. We haven't heard from them since." Not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has been talk­ing con­tin­u­al­ly about di­vest­ment and lur­ing in­vestors, the Fal­con source asked: "Why is this not mov­ing for­ward? Some of the best com­pa­nies in the world are bring­ing this to them on a plat­ter and af­ter four years no­body can give us an an­swer. It's scary.