SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s mas­ter plan for re­ju­ve­na­tion can save the city of Port-of-Spain from dy­ing as he ad­dressed the launch of the Spot­light Ini­tia­tive on the Re­ju­ve­na­tion of the City Project at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel yes­ter­day.

The first phase of the plan in­cludes re­mov­ing home­less peo­ple from the street, clean­ing and wash­ing the city streets, in­creas­ing po­lice pres­ence and in­creas­ing light­ing.

Row­ley said the city’s home­less pop­u­la­tion pos­es a ma­jor threat to the city’s de­vel­op­ment.

He said Port-of-Spain has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed from its for­mer glo­ry as he re­called com­ing to Trinidad when he lived in To­ba­go to shop on Queen Street in Port of Spain. He de­scribed Queen Street to­day, as “the toi­let of the cap­i­tal”.

“To­day to see that you have busi­ness­es leav­ing Queen Street be­cause there are hu­man rights and there are hu­man bod­i­ly func­tions - they go to­geth­er. So when the court rules in a par­tic­u­lar way, we al­so have to bal­ance it in an­oth­er way be­cause there is no hu­man right that says you ought not to be es­cort­ed up to the pub­lic toi­let in the square when it is func­tion­ing and it must func­tion when you pre­fer to use the pave­ment on Queen Street.”

The Memorial Plaza Development.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

He said while this plan will face op­po­si­tion, it will not work if the coun­try does not view it as one for the ben­e­fit of all cit­i­zens.

Row­ley said the re­ju­ve­na­tion will not on­ly bring busi­ness back to the city but will pro­vide hous­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for those who want to live in the city.

He said the Gov­ern­ment can­not af­ford this project on its own as he ap­pealed for pri­vate sec­tor in­vestors to come for­ward. He said the bank­ing sys­tem has $14 bil­lion in avail­able cap­i­tal that be­longs to the pri­vate sec­tor.

“Now is the time for the cap­i­tal, that $14 bil­lion of avail­able cap­i­tal in our bank­ing sys­tem, now is the time for the own­ers of that mon­ey to think about what do we do for the de­vel­op­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly our cap­i­tal city.”

Dr Row­ley ad­mit­ted that this was not the first time a plan like this has been con­cep­tu­al­ized.

He promised, how­ev­er, it would be the last.

“It is our in­ten­tion not to make this 17th ini­tia­tive not (just) an­oth­er one but to make it the last one of at­tempt­ing to rec­ti­fy a prob­lem by which its 16 an­tecedents by way of re­port would have demon­strat­ed that we as a na­tion, as the burgess­es of the city for quite a long time come to the con­clu­sion that some­thing has to be done,” he said.

The project will be over­seen by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (UDe­COTT).

An artist’s depiction of the Piccadilly Street Development Project.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Con­sul­ta­tion on the plan be­gan on Sep­tem­ber 18, 2019. Row­ley said UDe­COTT hired NL­BA Ar­chi­tects Lim­it­ed as a con­sul­tant on the project and af­ter stake­hold­er meet­ings, a fi­nal plan was pre­sent­ed to the Cor­po­ra­tion on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2020.

Row­ley said the ills of the city in­clude re­duced pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment, de­pop­u­la­tion, aban­doned and de­crepit in­fra­struc­ture, un­em­ploy­ment, home­less­ness and high crime lev­els.

Mean­while, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is sought to give as­sur­ances that while the Pica­dil­ly Street Re­de­vel­op­ment Project was al­ready be­fore the Cab­i­net, no res­i­dents from the area would be forced to leave their home.

“There is no in­ten­tion of mov­ing out the res­i­dents un­less they want to move out of the city be­cause the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) in con­junc­tion with UDe­COTT has been work­ing on a plan for the Pic­cadil­ly area, there are some parts that are not now oc­cu­pied by res­i­den­tial hous­ing,” she said.

“But there is an in­ten­tion to en­sure that we have a mix­ture of res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial and where there are peo­ple al­ready liv­ing in that area, they will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed.”

She said the re­cent de­vel­op­ment of Clifton Courts by UDe­COTT and HDC ac­com­mo­dat­ed ex­ist­ing res­i­dents of Pic­cadil­ly Street.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia to com­ment on crit­i­cisms on the tim­ing of this project with the re­cent an­nounce­ments of ma­jor cuts to the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es Pro­gramme (GATE), Robin­son-Reg­is was tight-lipped.

“I am not go­ing to talk about that, we didn’t talk about that to­day,” she said.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley gives the feature address at the Revitalisation of Port-of-Spain Spotlight on Urban Development at the Hyatt Regency, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

The cat­a­lysts of the Re­ju­ve­na­tion of the City of Port-of-Spain in­clude:

• ↓Memo­r­i­al Plaza De­vel­op­ment - de­vel­op­ment of the UDe­COTT-owned prop­er­ty lo­cat­ed at Keate Street and south of Memo­r­i­al Block to house a Mixed-Use Com­plex in­clu­sive of res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial, of­fice, park­ing and recre­ation­al spaces.

• ↓De­vel­op­ment of the Sal­va­tori Site - this project is in the plan­ning stage of de­vel­op­ment.

• ↓Pic­cadil­ly Street De­vel­op­ment - this project is be­fore the Cab­i­net for ap­proval for UDe­COTT to pro­ceed with an RFP and de­ter­mi­na­tion of the fund­ing source.

• ↓Pow­er­Gen Site De­vel­op­ment - de­vel­op­ment of the stat­ed-owned, for­mer site of the Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion Com­pa­ny lo­cat­ed at Wright­son Road.

• ↓City Gate De­vel­op­ment - a con­cept is to be de­vel­oped for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of City Gate.

• ↓Fore­shore Green­space - this project would in­clude the ex­pan­sion of green ar­eas in­volv­ing land recla­ma­tion at the Fore­shore at Mu­cu­rapo.