Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Ch­agua­nas will un­der­go a ma­jor trans­for­ma­tion with a planned $900 mil­lion in­vest­ment in the up­grade of the Cen­tre City Mall, which is lo­cat­ed in the heart of the bor­ough's busy shop­ping area.Dr An­tho­ny Fi­fi, a land de­vel­op­er and con­sul­tant with George Aboud & Sons Lim­it­ed (GASL), un­veiled the project dur­ing a Plan­ning Min­istry con­sul­ta­tion, Strat­e­gy for the 4Cs Growth Pole, at the Cou­va/Point Lisas Cham­ber of Com­merce con­fer­ence hall in Cam­den, Cou­va, yes­ter­day.

The 4Cs growth pole is a strate­gic plan for de­vel­op­ment of four dis­tricts in cen­tral Trinidad–Cou­va, Ch­agua­nas, Cara­pichaima and Char­lieville.Fi­fi said GASL plans to de­vel­op the ex­ist­ing Cen­tre City Mall in­to the most mod­ern shop­ping cen­tre in T&T. He said the ex­ist­ing mall is "quite small" and "will be ex­pand­ed to about ten times its size," cov­er­ing 17 acres of land stretch­ing from Mulchan Seuchan Road to east of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way.

From draw­ings pre­sent­ed yes­ter­day, the mall will take shop­pers on a walk from the Ch­agua­nas Main Road, where it cur­rent­ly starts, over the Mulchan Seuchan Road and to the east­ern wing run­ning north-south along the Uri­ah But­ler High­way."The con­struc­tion cost will be $900 mil­lion and will trans­form the en­tire cen­tre of Ch­agua­nas. It will cre­ate Ch­agua­nas' main street as one of the na­tion's fore­most shop­ping streets," Fi­fi said.

"GASL has al­ready in­vest­ed $350 mil­lion in land ac­qui­si­tion. The project is ful­ly de­signed and quite ready to go. We are in the process of fi­nal­is­ing with a main con­trac­tor to start work at the end of this dry sea­son."Yes­ter­day, Ch­agua­nas May­or Gopaul Boodan told the T&T Guardian that he wel­comed the project, which, he said, forms part of a larg­er de­vel­op­ment plan for Ch­agua­nas as a growth pole for the coun­try. He said the en­tire de­vel­op­ment project, when com­plet­ed, is ex­pect­ed to cost $1.1 bil­lion over­all.

Home for 300 busi­ness­es

Fi­fi said the up­grad­ed mall, which will house 300 busi­ness­es and a civic car park, will pro­vide 2,000 tem­po­rary jobs in the con­struc­tion phase and more than 1,000 per­ma­nent jobs when it opens in 2016."The tax con­tri­bu­tions from this es­tab­lish­ment will be quite enor­mous," he added.Fi­fi warned, how­ev­er, that the mul­ti-mil­lion con­struc­tion project could be "se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised and set back" if cer­tain ar­eas of con­cerns are not ad­dressed, in­clud­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion and il­le­gal vend­ing in Ch­agua­nas.

He al­so high­light­ed lack of prop­er plan­ning, an an­ti­quat­ed plan­ning and ap­proval process, lack of prop­er con­trol-rules and reg­u­la­tions, crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties and lack of re­spect for law and or­der."Un­less some of these fac­tors are sort­ed out, in par­tic­u­lar the traf­fic con­ges­tion and vend­ing, we would prob­a­bly be shoot­ing our­selves in the foot," he said.Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie as­sured that those ar­eas of con­cern will be re­viewed by the Ch­agua­nas may­or.