The $15 mil­lion Phase 1 Ari­api­ta Av­enue En­hance­ment Project is on its way as the Gov­ern­ment tries to make “De Av­enue” in Wood­brook a pre­mier eco­nom­ic and leisure zone in the city of Port-of-Spain and the re­gion with work al­ready start­ed on the po­lice post at Adam Smith Square.

On the con­struc­tion of a po­lice post on the Av­enue, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez not­ed that tourism and safe­ty go hand-in-hand.

“If you want to be safe we have to have the po­lice pres­ence close by. A lot of peo­ple are crit­i­cal of every­thing you try to do al­though I think peo­ple will wel­come the ex­tra se­cu­ri­ty for the area. It will be mu­nic­i­pal po­lice which is city po­lice. It will be a mix­ture of of­fi­cers from the TTPS who will join us. We need to grow from where we are and we need to de­vel­op and we want to de­vel­op with the peo­ple,” Mar­tinez ex­plained.

Not­ing that one of the ma­jor con­cerns in the coun­try re­mains crime, the may­or said while “no body want a po­lice post, every body wants crime to be solved.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell UDe­COTT pre­pared a bud­get of $15,187,500, VAT in­clu­sive for Phase One of the project.

Phase One will in­cor­po­rate west/east arch­es, de­vel­op­ment of tex­tured side­walks, green­ery/land­scap­ing, shut­tle stops, cy­cle track, dec­o­ra­tive garbage bins, sig­nage, elec­tron­ic bol­lards, po­lice post, pub­lic wash­rooms, street light­ing and ac­ces­sories.

Phase Two will see a west/east car park be­ing con­struct­ed.

As part of the con­cept, it was pro­posed that arch­es will be used as thresh­olds to mark the en­try/ex­it at both ends of Ari­api­ta Av­enue.

They will al­so serve as land­marks to brand the area as a pre­mier en­ter­tain­ment zone.

These two arch­es will fuse Wood­brook’s his­toric and rich ar­chi­tec­tur­al her­itage with its di­verse cul­tur­al as­sets through lo­cal mo­tifs and iconog­ra­phy.

Ac­cord­ing to the Tourism Min­istry lo­cal land­marks in the form of arch­es serve as recog­nis­able and in­deli­ble icons and are im­por­tant in the brand­ing and mar­ket­ing of the des­ti­na­tion.

Mitchell said up­on suc­cess­ful de­liv­ery of the en­hance­ment works, it is an­tic­i­pat­ed that Ari­api­ta Av­enue will be trans­formed in­to a ma­jor tourist at­trac­tion, where vis­i­tors can ex­pe­ri­ence Trinidad and To­ba­go’s au­then­tic tourism of­fer­ings through food, nightlife, cul­ture and en­ter­tain­ment.

He added that it is al­so en­vis­aged that a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic im­pact will flow from this trans­for­ma­tion with in­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the area.

“The en­hance­ment would al­so cre­ate a more or­gan­ised use of the space with com­mon un­der­stand­ing be­tween pri­vate and pub­lic stake­hold­ers and the im­me­di­ate com­mu­ni­ty,” the Tourism Min­is­ter said.

Ude­cott’s se­nior ar­chi­tect Mar­lon Charles who had pre­sent­ed the pre­lim­i­nary con­cep­tu­al de­sign said phase two would tar­get in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment—main­ly con­struc­tion of two four-storey car parks lo­cat­ed west of De Av­enue, close to Belle Smythe Street and east near Colville Street.

These car parks will ac­com­mo­date 800 ve­hi­cles and will fa­cil­i­tate the use of shut­tles in a park and ride sys­tem.

The ground floor of the car parks will house re­tail shops.

Re­gard­ing oth­er plans to up­grade the city Mar­tinez said work is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place at Memo­r­i­al Park es­pe­cial­ly as the Pres­i­dent of Guyana and Ja­maica’s Prime Min­is­ter are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T at the end of Au­gust to at­tend this coun­try’s In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions.

And in Sep­tem­ber a let­ter of in­tent will be signed sig­nalling the twin­ning of Port-of-Spain with Shang­hai.

The ini­tia­tive is ex­pect­ed to fur­ther de­vel­op cul­ture, com­merce ed­u­ca­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Mar­tinez said there’s a plans for Pan The­atre for the Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra lo­cat­ed at Nel­son and George Streets, Port-of-Spain with the sod al­ready be­ing turned by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

There are al­so plans to in­cor­po­rate a “Walk of Fame” in­to the city, cel­e­brat­ing icons from var­i­ous spheres and this will be sim­i­lar to that of the Los An­ge­les Walk of Fame.

“We want to make the city more walk­a­ble.We want to cre­ate am­bi­ent mu­sic on the prom­e­nade. A lot of these things are al­ready in mo­tion and is at the point where ex­e­cu­tion will hope­ful­ly be­gin soon.

“The am­bi­ent mu­sic is re­al­ly to build the pride and joy of our cit­i­zens. We can take some things from oth­ers coun­tries which have been suc­cess­ful,” Mar­tinez added.

And ul­ti­mate­ly, he said he would like to see Car­ni­val char­ac­ters walk­ing through­out the parks and squares so peo­ple can un­der­stand where tra­di­tion­al mas came from .

“We have to start do­ing some­thing for our peo­ple. We have the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade and we want to put up a sign there be­cause there’s no sign that says Bri­an Lara,” the may­or added.

But the city is al­so faced with neg­a­tive el­e­ments such as home­less­ness, filthy streets, poor roads and in­dis­crim­i­nate park­ing.

Mar­tinez asured these is­sues will be ad­dressed.

“We are hop­ing to do some­thing about the home­less be­cause they are con­tin­u­ing to defe­cate, they are con­tin­u­ing to leave mess all over the place and they are dis­tress­ing the nat­ur­al pop­u­la­tion,” he said.

There is al­so the ques­tion of the poor road in­fra­struc­ture in the cap­i­tal city, Mar­tinez said “WASA at times, dig­ging up the roads” be­cause the in­fra­struc­ture un­der­neath is al­so poor that has caused the prob­lem. But he not­ed WASA al­so has its own chal­lenges which are be­ing ad­dress­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Mar­tinez, ma­te­r­i­al to fix pot­holes can be chal­leng­ing.

“We need ma­te­r­i­al. The coal mix does not work and the hot mix, you have to go all the way in south to get it and it must be ad­min­is­tered the same day be­cause it will get hard and it will be a waste. So we have to time it and when you’re tim­ing things like this it is not so easy when you have to deal with work­ers who are some­times set in their pro­grammes. And then too we don’t al­ways have the sup­port we would like to get from our en­gi­neer­ing di­vi­sion. We have some of­fi­cers who work hard and some who need to pull their weight,” Mar­tinez ex­plained.