SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Ari­api­ta Av­enue in Wood­brook, pop­u­lar­ly known as the "De Av­enue" will re­ceive a $10 to $20 mil­lion in­jec­tion in de­vel­op­men­tal works be­fore Sep­tem­ber that will trans­form the nightlife area in­to a pre­mier tourist des­ti­na­tion to boost rev­enue for the Gov­ern­ment and in­crease busi­ness sales.

The project which is be­ing ex­e­cut­ed by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) for the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts was un­veiled on Mon­day at a vir­tu­al con­sul­ta­tion par­tic­i­pat­ed by Wood­brook res­i­dents, busi­ness own­ers and stake­hold­ers.

The con­sul­ta­tion was at­tend­ed by Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, Port-of-Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez, Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land and Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is who gave an in­sight in­to the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion project which was an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last No­vem­ber.

The project will be ex­e­cut­ed in two phas­es.

The first phase, Mitchell said will be ex­e­cut­ed "with­in this fi­nan­cial year ...be­fore the end of Sep­tem­ber...we go in­to phase one. I don't an­tic­i­pate phase one tak­ing longer than one year."

Mitchell said they an­tic­i­pate this phase would not be very ex­pen­sive "per­haps be­tween $10 to $20 mil­lion and then we go on to phase two as fund­ing is made avail­able."

"In Port-of-Spain, we now have a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op a nightlife leisure and en­ter­tain­ment hub made up of a clus­ter of restau­rants, bars and casi­nos on Ari­api­ta Av­enue."

"We be­lieve that the Ari­api­ta Av­enue ex­pe­ri­ence can be­come world-fa­mous just like Fre­mont Street is to Las Ve­gas and Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus is to Lon­don."

Ude­cott's se­nior ar­chi­tect Mar­lon Charles who pre­sent­ed the pre­lim­i­nary con­cep­tu­al de­sign said works would ad­dress four is­sues - ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, com­fort, safe­ty and con­ve­nience.

Phase one would con­sist of easy start-ups and low cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture el­e­ments which would fo­cus on an up­grade of the streetscape us­ing com­mer­cial grade con­crete to the ex­ist­ing side­walk, green­ery, shut­tle stops and garbage bins on both sides of the av­enue.

Black olive trees will be plant­ed 16 feet apart which will cre­ate an ar­cade to soft­en the ur­ban land­scape.

"We pro­posed to con­struct gate­ways on the east and west ends of the av­enue and pro­vide tem­po­rary park­ing to fa­cil­i­tate park and ride for pa­trons."

Shut­tle stops will be spaced every 400 me­tres for pa­trons who pre­fer not to walk.

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.

"At Adam Smith Square, which is lo­cat­ed in the mid­dle of Ari­api­ta Av­enue we pro­posed to in­tro­duce a po­lice post to im­prove the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and add pub­lic wash­rooms to im­prove san­i­ta­tion," Charles said.

Ad­di­tion­al, streets light will be erect­ed at key in­ter­sec­tions to high­light zones of in­ter­ests, while so­lar charg­ing sta­tions will be lo­cat­ed at pop­u­lar hang­outs for charg­ing of cell­phones.

Au­to­mat­ic hy­draulic bol­lards will be in­stalled to pre­vent ve­hic­u­lar ac­cess which Charles said can be used to en­sure pa­trons safe­ty dur­ing fes­ti­vals.

A steel thrust span­ning eight me­ters dis­play­ing sil­hou­ettes of Car­ni­val char­ac­ters will be erect­ed over the road­way.

"All of these items can be spon­sors by the pri­vate busi­ness sec­tor to en­sure the up­keep and main­te­nance."

Charles said these con­cepts are not cast and stone and Ude­cott is pre­pared to go back to the draw­ing board to meet the stake­hold­ers' needs.

Dur­ing the ques­tion and an­swer seg­ment, Mitchell was asked how the gov­ern­ment would gen­er­ate re­turns on this in­vest­ment.

Mitchell said they ex­pect to at­tract users, in­crease vis­i­tors' spend, the de­mand for ser­vices and for­eign ex­change, as well as cre­ate jobs.

"And what that trans­lates in­to for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is an in­crease in prof­its and it trans­lates to the Gov­ern­ment an in­crease in its tax rev­enues."

Among the con­cerns raised by the res­i­dents was noise pol­lu­tion, block­ing of gate­ways by pa­trons, dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour and ex­ces­sive al­co­hol con­sump­tion.

Mitchell said it was worth­while to con­sid­er the val­ue and po­ten­tial of tourism glob­al­ly.

In 2019, he said the glob­al tourism sec­tor was one of the fastest-grow­ing in­dus­try world­wide, as one in four peo­ple were em­ployed with­in the trav­el and tourism sec­tors.

That was be­fore COVID-19.

"At $9 tril­lion trav­el and tourism con­tributed ten per cent to the world's GDP. In the re­gion here, em­ploy­ment in trav­el and tourism ac­count­ed for 15 per cent of all jobs gen­er­at­ed in the re­gion."

It al­so ac­count­ed for 13 per cent of glob­al GDP at US$59 bil­lion.

Mitchell said in 2019, T&T's tourism sec­tor con­tributed to eight per cent or $13 bil­lion of the coun­try's to­tal GDP of $160 bil­lion.

"So, from the num­bers, it is easy to sur­mise that T&T lags be­hind our re­gion­al part­ners where tourism per­for­mance and tourism out­put is con­sid­ered."

Mitchell said there are many an­swers as to why that was so.

He said rev­enues from oil and gas over the years con­tributed to the coun­try's na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

"There­fore, for past gov­ern­ments, it was nev­er a pri­or­i­ty. It was nev­er re­al­ly any ur­gency to en­gage in sig­nif­i­cant tourism de­vel­op­ment, es­pe­cial­ly hav­ing re­gard to the tourism in­dus­try be­ing very risky."

That risk, he said, reared its ug­ly head over the "last year" and con­tin­ues to­day due to the lin­ger­ing pan­dem­ic.

Mitchell said trav­el and tourism busi­ness­es have seen dis­rup­tions and loss of prof­its with the event of the pan­dem­ic.

"And, here at home tells a grim pic­ture about the neg­a­tive im­pacts that COVID has had to our fi­nan­cial well be­ing."

How­ev­er, Mitchell said they are com­fort­ed that COVID-19 will soon pass.

As T&T ramps up its vac­ci­na­tion ex­er­cise, Mitchell said they were ad­vised to be­gin prepa­ra­tion to re­bound out of this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od with the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion project.

"In terms of the re­bound, if ever there was a time that our econ­o­my need­ed the non-en­er­gy sec­tor... every non-en­er­gy sec­tor to im­prove its com­pet­i­tive­ness, to prove its val­ue and its con­tri­bu­tion to GDP...to im­prove its pro­duc­tiv­i­ty... that time is now."

He said the time has come for T&T to move away from our heavy re­liance on the "volatile and un­pre­dictable" en­er­gy sec­tor and plan for a surge in the trav­el and tourism in­dus­try post-COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, as well as de­vel­op at­trac­tions to mar­ket our tourism prod­uct.

He said the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um where we host CPL games has been work­ing well for sports tourism.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the project seeks to make Ari­api­ta Av­enue a pre­mier res­i­den­tial eco­nom­ic and leisure zone which would help pro­mote T&T as a for­mi­da­ble tourist des­ti­na­tion.

While this ini­tia­tive is be­ing dri­ven by the gov­ern­ment, she said it will be large­ly de­pen­dent on pri­vate sec­tor in­put and in­volve­ment.

"The plan will bring life back in­to the city through strate­gic de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ty. I can re­port this evening that the ten­der­ing process for the Pic­cadi­ly Street hous­ing project, Sal­va­tori Build­ing and Memo­r­i­al Plaza de­vel­op­ment has al­ready be­gun. Plan­ning ac­tiv­i­ties are al­so in train for the re­de­vel­op­ment of City Gate, a lo­calised tram sys­tem and the Fore­shore Green Park."

Even though we are grap­pling with COVID-19, Robin­son-Reg­is said now was an op­por­tune time to de­vel­op the area to serve as an­oth­er means of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

"Con­fi­dent that if we are to see growth and the resur­gence of com­merce in the city cen­tre, stem­ming the tide of busi­ness trans­plants to oth­er emerg­ing out­skirts lo­ca­tions across the coun­try, this is the path we must fol­low."

She said the dis­ap­pear­ance of busi­ness­es from the Port-of-Spain land­scape sends all the wrong sig­nals.

"Sad­ly, that mi­gra­tion out of the city cen­tre has al­ready be­gun."

This trend, she said has to be halt­ed quick­ly.

"As with any change pro­posed or im­ple­ment­ed there will al­ways be con­cerns."