Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Ch­aguara­mas is get­ting a much-need­ed facelift. The en­trance to very pop­u­lar lim­ing spot now has 1,300 feet board­walk that starts at the en­trance to Ch­aguara­mas, which is just af­ter the Alu­mini­um Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca (Al­coa) on the West­ern Main Road. The Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) has strate­gi­cal­ly placed along the board­walk seat­ing ar­eas out­fit­ted with wi-fi hotspots with ac­cess decks over­look­ing the ocean. This is an area soon to be filled with a va­ri­ety of ven­dors of­fer­ing lo­cal cui­sine from tan­ta­lis­ing dish­es like bake-and-shark. The west­ern penin­su­la, as we know it, is home to yacht­ing boat­yards and all-in­clu­sive fetes, fish­ing and kayak­ing.

Fam­i­lies who fre­quent Ch­aguara­mas for lim­ing or swim­ming can feel safe. There's now a 24-hour manned se­cu­ri­ty fa­cil­i­ty, in­clud­ing a steel bar­ri­er, at the en­trance to Ch­aguara­mas. It's com­mon to see CDA se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers rid­ing on bi­cy­cles aid­ed by in­tel­li­gence-led polic­ing and in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy.

De­tails of these ICT plat­forms were not re­vealed.

De­vel­op­ing the board­walk

Dan­ny Solomon, chair­man of the CDA, sat down with the Busi­ness Guardian last Thurs­day to give a de­tailed pic­ture of what changes will come when the first phase of the board­walk is done. Solomon was un­able to say how long the board­walk will even­tu­al­ly be, ex­cept that the CDA hopes to build the board­walk along the length of the penin­su­la. Solomon said the first phase of the board­walk would be opened on April 13. He stat­ed the $5 mil­lion con­tract is one of many things the CDA has planned to lure lo­cals back to the West. The CDA em­barked on the project to en­hance the area and pro­vide a beau­ti­ful, safe and us­able space for peo­ple. Asked what has this CDA board done dif­fer­ent­ly from past ad­min­is­tra­tions which made promis­es, but failed to de­liv­er, Solomon said: "The dif­fer­ence is that CDA has been ne­glect­ed." "Over the past years, the de­vel­op­ment plans for Ch­aguara­mas have been ex­e­cut­ed in an ad hoc man­ner with a num­ber of in­dus­tries pop­ping up with no clear guide­lines." There was no over­all plan of how the penin­su­la should be de­vel­oped, Solomon said. Think­ing hard to re­call when was the last ap­proved de­vel­op­ment plan, Solomon said he be­lieved it was in 1974. There was an­oth­er plan in 1988, but it was not ap­proved.

Call for new mas­ter plan

CDA has put out a re­quest for pro­pos­al (RF­Ps) for a mas­ter plan. On March 22, the CDA pub­lished in dai­ly news­pa­pers a RFP for a mas­ter plan to de­vel­op the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la and off­shore is­lands. It said that CDA in­vites suit­ably qual­i­fied en­ti­ties to sub­scribe for a copy of the RFP for a non-re­fund­able US$1,000 fee payable by cash/cer­ti­fied cheque/di­rect de­posit or wire trans­fer. RF­PS must be sub­mit­ted by Ju­ly 11 and the se­lect­ed can­di­date would be re­quired to sign a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment, which is avail­able at the CDA's of­fice. Solomon said the 1974 de­vel­op­ment plan is out­dat­ed and reg­u­la­tions have changed.

Al­so, many in­dus­tries have popped up:

• yacht­ing

• oil and gas

• boat re­pair

• eco-tourism

"The area cries out for a prop­er de­vel­op­ment plan, so we are ful­fill­ing our man­date to make Ch­aguara­mas a world-class eco-tourism des­ti­na­tion, en­ter­tain­ment and busi­ness cen­tre. The mas­ter plan would guide us on how to de­vel­op the en­tire penin­su­la."

Four-phased board­walk

Solomon said the board­walk would be done in about four phas­es.

Phase one

The first phase of the project is worth $5 mil­lion with a pay­back pe­ri­od of five years through rental of booths, ad­ver­tise­ments, and rev­enue for car park and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties as well as one-off events on the board­walk. The first of its kind the board­walk is a pi­lot project. Solomon said se­cu­ri­ty has been ramped up sig­nif­i­cant­ly, that se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers have been dou­bled so the penin­su­la can be locked down at any time. He ex­plained the board­walk, the guard booth, garbage bins will be made with re­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als, main­ly plas­tics. The area will be so­lar-pow­ered lit. He said the four-foot con­crete apron, built since World War II, would be for­ti­fied to pre­vent ero­sion that has been plagu­ing the coast­line. "It's our mis­sion to make Ch­aguara­mas a clean, eco-friend­ly en­vi­ron­ment." Solomon said the CDA has al­ready re­ceived tremen­dous re­spons­es from small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es to set up vend­ing booths along the board­walk to pro­mote com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty and SMEs.

SMEs would be re­quired to ob­tain a li­cence to rent a space ei­ther for a day or an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od. There would be prop­er poli­cies and reg­u­la­tions to guide all ac­tiv­i­ties in the area. Solomon said SMEs would range from par­lour-type prod­ucts like ice-cream, bake-and-shark, rental of bi­cy­cles, beach toys and food. There would al­so be an in­for­ma­tion booth.

Phase two

Solomon said the board­walk's sec­ond phase should be com­plet­ed with­in the next three months. He said, if all goes well, it would in­clude a jet­ty for fish­ing, a rock climb­ing wall and dif­fer­ent recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties. Oth­er plans in­clude cook­ing fa­cil­i­ties for fam­i­lies and rental of gaze­bo-type cen­tres. The idea be­hind phase two is to con­tin­ue CDA's plans to re­vi­talise fam­i­ly life in a healthy, safe, fun-filled en­vi­ron­ment. The CDA hopes to im­ple­ment a sys­tem which pre­vents garbage from com­ing on to its beach­es. He said an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al task force com­pris­ing of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and stake­hold­ers was es­tab­lished to deal with pos­si­ble garbage catch­ment sys­tems. In the mean­time, Solomon said the CDA would be set­ting up its own. The CDA has launched Cepep Ma­rine, which would be us­ing boats to clean up the coast­line. The CDA would be work­ing with Cepep and the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion on this ini­tia­tive. "We would be us­ing veg­e­ta­tion that is salt-re­sis­tant and can with­stand the en­vi­ron­ment to en­sure there is a 24-hour well-func­tion­ing ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tem." Life­guard booths, he said, would be con­struct­ed us­ing re­cy­cled plas­tic. Park­ing for peo­ple in wheel­chairs and the phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged would be built all the way to the beach.

Trans­port so­lu­tions

Join­ing the in­ter­view via tele­phone, Joycelin Har­g­reaves-CDA's act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer- said the CDA is work­ing on the im­prov­ing ac­cess routes to Ch­aguara­mas. The one-in-one-out fa­cil­i­ty has seen ma­jor traf­fic pile up as far from Movi­eTowne straight to Ch­aguara­mas when there is one ma­jor event. For ex­am­ple, the first-ever held Ju­ly 2011 Flug­tag event that was an abysmal fail­ure: hours of grid­lock park­ing, drown­ings and lit­tle polic­ing and se­cu­ri­ty. Har­g­reaves said CDA in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny is work­ing on a num­ber of trans­porta­tion so­lu­tions. She said Nid­co has em­barked on a high­way fea­si­bil­i­ty study from Mor­vant to Ch­aguara­mas. "We have al­ready en­gaged a wa­ter taxi ser­vice where Nid­co would al­so be dri­ving that ini­tia­tive. How­ev­er, Nid­co is still work­ing on fi­nal fund­ing arrange­ments. She said for large events, the CDA would al­so be util­is­ing the wa­ter taxi ser­vices. Over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, she said the CDA used the sys­tem and did sev­er­al runs. The ride from Port-of-Spain to Ch­aguara­mas took 20 min­utes.