Pri­or Be­har­ry

For­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) Calder Hart left Trinidad on Sat­ur­day af­ter re­sign­ing from five State boards and is stay­ing in one of the most lux­u­ri­ous con­dominums in South­ern Flori­da. The Guardian has been told by two res­i­dents and two staff mem­bers of the Las Olas Grand that Calder Hart and his wife Sher­rine were now stay­ing in a con­do there. How­ev­er, when in­quiries were made, via the concierge Gail Brown, she said she did not see the Harts around yes­ter­day. She re­fused to say any­thing else. The Las Olas has been de­scribed as a five-star re­sort by a re­al­tor – Diego Meeroff – the mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor of D'An­ge­lo Re­al­ty Group. He said the Las Olas De­vel­op­ment where the Las Olas Grand is lo­cat­ed runs from down­town Ft Laud­erdale to Ft Laud­erdale Beach. Mer­roff said the con­dos were very high-priced and the Grand could be con­sid­ered the most up­scale con­do­mini­um in Broward Coun­ty. He said con­dos ranged from US$350,000 to US$1mil­lion. And ac­cord­ing to the web site Block Shop­per South Flori­da, John C Hart and Sher­rine Hart bought unit 701 in the con­do de­vel­op­ment, lo­cat­ed at 411 North New Riv­er Dri­ve East, Ft Laud­erdale.

It was bought on June 22, 2009, from Richard S Gore and the Richard S Gore Trust for US$800,000, Block Shop­per not­ed. It stat­ed the apart­ment has five bed­rooms and three bath­rooms in 2,635 sq ft of liv­ing area. Mer­roff said D'An­ge­lo Re­al­ty rep­re­sent­ed own­ers at the "very up­scale" Grand. The five-star ameni­ties, ac­cord­ing to D'An­ge­lo Re­al­ty's web site, in­clude two-storey lob­by area, 24-hour front desk, valet park­ing, land­scape gar­den deck, out­door spa and heat­ed pool, li­brary with In­ter­net ports, bil­lards and card­room, kitchens with gran­ite counter tops and re­fridger­a­tors with ice-mak­ers. Yes­ter­day, when the Guardian vis­it­ed the Las Olas Grand, valets were park­ing cars and bring­ing parked ones to own­ers. They re­ceived a tip for each ac­tiv­i­ty. Ac­cess to the lob­by of the Grand was gained through two huge gold­en doors that opened to­wards the out­side. In­side to the right was concierge Gail Brown. To the left was the front desk with a re­cep­tion­ist and a uni­formed se­cu­ri­ty who had to au­tho­rise ac­cess for peo­ple to get to the con­dos.

In front of the grand is the River­walk, de­scribed as "Flori­da's Most Beau­ti­ful Mile" which has along it the Broward Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts, the Mu­se­um of Sci­ence and Dis­cov­ery and a the­atre. Grac­ing the River­walk was the New Riv­er. In front of the Grand on the New Riv­er was the Car­rie B, a boat that for US$20 of­fers a 90-minute tour twice dai­ly. The tour op­er­a­tor boasts that pa­trons will ex­pe­ri­ence why Ft Laud­erdale is called the "Venice of Amer­i­ca". Its tour in­clud­ed the Mi­a­mi Vice House, ex­trav­a­gant man­sions, mega yachts and the old­est house on the New Riv­er. Hart re­signed from five State boards af­ter months of calls for his res­ig­na­tion. His res­ig­na­tion fol­lowed in­for­ma­tion that sur­faced al­leg­ing that his fam­i­ly had links to the board mem­bers of CH De­vel­op­ment, which was now Sun­way, and has been award the $368 mil­lion con­tract to build the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er in Port-of-Spain.