San­dra Chouthi

Trinci­ty is to have more mall space. An in­dus­tri­al park is to be de­vel­oped in Trinci­ty. A new shop­ping cen­tre is tar­get­ed for San Fer­nan­do. And a $90 mil­lion eight-storey, 500-spot car park will be built at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall. Those are just four of the ma­jor projects oc­cu­py­ing the at­ten­tion of Win­ston Richard Le Blanc, 40, act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Home Con­struc­tion Ltd (HCL), a CL Fi­nan­cial sub­sidiary. Ac­cord­ing to the CL Fi­nan­cial an­nu­al re­port from 2007, CL Fi­nan­cial owns 100 per cent of HCL. Lawrence Duprey, for­mer chair­man of CL Fi­nan­cial, in Jan­u­ary 2009 ap­proached the Gov­ern­ment for a bailout for the CL Fi­nan­cial sub­sidiaries: Cli­co, British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd, Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank and CMMB. The State has since in­ject­ed more than $7 bil­lion in­to CL Fi­nan­cial. Trinci­ty Mall, a main at­trac­tion in HCL's Trinci­ty Mil­len­ni­um Vi­sion, which now has 500,000 square feet of re­tail space, will be ex­pand­ed to one mil­lion square feet on com­ple­tion. By Le Blanc's es­ti­ma­tion, T&T could eas­i­ly ab­sorb two mil­lion square feet of re­tail space.

Ac­cord­ing to the Web site, oneill­realestate.ca, Mau­reen Atkin­son, an an­a­lyst with the Cana­di­an re­tail con­sul­tan­cy JC Williams, Cana­da (pop­u­la­tion: 32.2 mil­lion) has about 14.6 square feet of shop­ping cen­tre space per capi­ta. The Unit­ed States (pop­u­la­tion: 307 mil­lion) has about 23.8 square feet of re­tail space for every Amer­i­can. "If you ex­trap­o­late in­to Trinidad, you'll re­alise that we still have a lot of room for ex­pan­sion as re­gards shop­ping, en­ter­tain­ment," said Le Blanc, in an in­ter­view last week Tues­day at HCL's of­fices at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, one of three malls in the CL Fi­nan­cial Group. Its oth­er malls are Val­park Shop­ping Plaza and Trinci­ty Mall. He said the east­ward ex­pan­sion of Trinci­ty Mall will be a "hy­brid-type mall" where there will be a com­bi­na­tion of en­closed space and an out­door en­ter­tain­ment and re­tail area. Four more restau­rants will be added to the mall's ex­ist­ing six din­ing spots. "More shop­ping, more en­ter­tain­ment," Le Blanc said. "A lot of the re­tail will com­prise big tick­et stores."

He said there are re­tail­ers, some of whom are lo­cat­ed at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, who want to ex­pand, but can't.

"The kind of stores they re­al­ly want to de­vel­op in Trinci­ty, the mall with­in a mall might ac­tu­al­ly make it fea­si­ble. It will be far bet­ter for them to move out and build their own build­ings. "You don't want these types of re­tail­ers mov­ing out and scat­ter­ing be­cause part of the whole ad­van­tage of be­ing in a mall is be­ing close to each oth­er so peo­ple could syn­er­gise off of each oth­er." Le Blanc said HCL will bear the cost of ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture for the com­mon ar­eas of the mall's ex­te­ri­or at an es­ti­mat­ed $60 mil­lion cost. In­ter­est­ed par­ties will build their own build­ings, which will be con­nect­ed, "pedes­tri­anised" and aes­thet­i­cal­ly de­signed. Le Blanc, who stud­ied eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and is a qual­i­fied char­tered ac­coun­tant, ini­tial­ly shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing HCL with Hay­den Ameer­ali, chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer of HCL, fol­low­ing the Au­gust 2008 re­tire­ment of man­ag­ing di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Michael Fi­fi. Ameer­ali left the com­pa­ny in De­cem­ber 2009.

Re­struc­tured deals

The HCL boss said there are cer­tain chal­lenges fac­ing the prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny, both from the "CL Fi­nan­cial de­ba­cle in Jan­u­ary 2009," and the glob­al re­ces­sion. "There is a slow­down stem­ming from the world econ­o­my. There are no two ways about it," Le Blanc said. Asked about the source of fi­nanc­ing for these projects, Le Blanc said, "all projects will be fi­nanced by the com­pa­ny." He said while all com­pa­nies would have been af­fect­ed by what he called the "CL Fi­nan­cial de­ba­cle, the projects are strong and speak for them­selves." How­ev­er, Os­bourne Nurse, as then gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed chair­man of HCL, on May 20, 2010, signed a $1.073 bil­lion debt-re­struc­tur­ing deal with state-owned First Cit­i­zens Bank. Nurse is no longer HCL chair­man. Ac­cord­ing to the Web site of PAF (PanAmer­i­can­Fi­nance) Se­cu­ri­ties, a Mi­a­mi-based, First Cit­i­zens-hired con­sult­ing firm, in Sep­tem­ber 2010 ad­vised Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers Ltd, a for­mer sub­sidiary of CL Fi­nan­cial that First Cit­i­zens ac­quired as part of the Gov­ern­ment's mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with CL Fi­nan­cial, on the struc­tur­ing and pro­vi­sion of a new US$12.8 mil­lion long-term debt fi­nanc­ing to HCL as part of the com­pre­hen­sive re­struc­tur­ing of HCL's debt fa­cil­i­ties. In Au­gust 2010, PAF Se­cu­ri­ties al­so ad­vised First Cit­i­zens on the com­pre­hen­sive re­struc­tur­ing of US$171 mil­lion in ex­ist­ing long-term debt fa­cil­i­ties pro­vid­ed to HCL for the con­struc­tion of One Wood­brook Place (OWP), the bil­lion-dol­lar, triple-tow­er res­i­den­tial and re­tail de­vel­op­ment. Ac­cord­ing to the CL Fi­nan­cial an­nu­al re­port for 2007, HCL has bor­rowed $699 mil­lion from First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd, se­cured by a first mort­gage over the lands of OWP. The pro­ceeds of the fa­cil­i­ty were used to fi­nance con­struc­tion of the OWP de­vel­op­ment.

One Wood­brook Place

Ac­cord­ing to Le Blanc, OWP, which in 2007 had an orig­i­nal bud­get of $800 mil­lion and a sched­uled com­ple­tion in 2008, has leased out 80 per cent of its re­tail space. He said the com­plet­ed project is like­ly to cost $2 bil­lion. Al­ready opened for busi­ness there are Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, Nike, Adi­das, Puma, bmo­bile and Chaud's. Le Blanc said Tow­er Three is be­ing com­plet­ed, fol­lowed by four podi­ums-four-storey apart­ment build­ings. Of OWP's 432 apart­ments, about 150 are oc­cu­pied. And, of that num­ber, about 75 are rent­ed by ex­pa­tri­ates from the en­er­gy and con­struc­tion sec­tors. Ac­cord­ing to the re­al es­tate com­pa­ny, Ex­ec­u­tive Prop­er­ties, one-bed­room, two-bed­room and three-bed­room apart­ments rent month­ly for US$1,500; up to US$2,800 and US$4,000, re­spec­tive­ly. Podi­um apart­ments, which are two-and three-bed­rooms, rent for US$2,500 a month. Le Blanc gave an es­ti­mate of the cost of the apart­ments: one bed­rooms, be­tween $1.8 mil­lion and $2 mil­lion. Two-bed­rooms cost be­tween $2.5 mil­lion and $3 mil­lion. And three-bed­rooms cost be­tween $4.2 mil­lion and $4.3 mil­lion.

HCL projects

Le Blanc, who start­ed at HCL as a man­age­ment trainee do­ing prop­er­ty man­age­ment, said HCL is now mas­ter plan­ning a shop­ping and en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre on 16-and-a-half acres next to the San Fer­nan­do Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute. "It's a new con­cept. It would be more like a se­ries of in­di­vid­ual shops, clus­ter of shops, which are all con­ve­nient­ly lo­cat­ed, pedes­tri­anised so that there's easy walk­ing from one build­ing to an­oth­er.

"Giv­en the type of shop­ping cen­tre it is, it's not like Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, Val­park or West Mall. It may very well just be de­vel­op­ment of a site that's all con­nect­ed and peo­ple buy their own lots and build their own build­ings. It may be more of an out­door shop­ping and en­ter­tain­ment des­ti­na­tion," he said.

Cost of the project is still un­de­ter­mined.

Le Blanc, who worked with Fi­fi for 15 years, said a lot of Fi­fi's ide­ol­o­gy con­tin­ues, just that he's added more en­ter­tain­ment in­to the shop­ping mix. For in­stance, Caribbean Cin­e­mas 8 at Trinci­ty Mall might like­ly grow to 14 screens. A new com­mu­ni­ty on a 200-acre site south of The Cross­ings, lo­cat­ed at San­ta Rosa West, Ari­ma, is al­so be­ing mas­ter planned. HCL is cur­rent­ly sell­ing two- and three-bed­room units for $1.6 mil­lion and $1.9 mil­lion, re­spec­tive­ly, in West Lakes Golf Course Con­dos, Trinci­ty. The gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty, to com­prise four six-storey medi­um-rise build­ings to­talling 120 units, is be­ing mar­ket­ed as be­ing equipped with a swim­ming pool and golf course mem­ber­ship. Each con­do­mini­um will have a dish­wash­er, mi­crowave, wash­er, dry­er, fridge and stove. Le Blanc men­tioned that HCL is seek­ing statu­to­ry ap­provals for a res­i­den­tial/com­mer­cial project on a 20-acre site op­po­site the San­ta Cruz Fire Sta­tion, but di­vulged lit­tle oth­er­wise.

Trinci­ty Busi­ness Dis­trict

As of April 28, HCL had ad­ver­tised lots for busi­ness­es at $125 per square feet at Trinci­ty. "Those prices are soon to be changed. It's go­ing up," Le Blanc said. "We have a land com­mit­tee. We have cer­tain tar­gets, when we hit them, we sit down and re­view where we are and where we are go­ing. We have been hit­ting our tar­gets. That $125 is what we start­ed Phase One of the park with." HCL has so far sold about ten 20,000 square foot lots to de­vel­op the 25-acre busi­ness park. Lots range be­tween 20,562 square feet and 34,188 square feet. "The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple who buy at these sizes tend to put up A-class of­fices." To an ar­gu­ment that Trinci­ty is be­com­ing too de­vel­oped, too dense, Le Blanc said he doesn't agree. He said Trinci­ty has suf­fi­cient green spaces, in­clud­ing the 18-hole, 63-hectare Mil­len­ni­um Golf Course. "Any more green space and it will be a ranch we're sell­ing," Le Blanc said, with a laugh. "I can't see it be­ing a con­gest­ed, high-den­si­ty area. I be­lieve there is enough green space there." More mall de­vel­op­ment is good, it would seem. He cit­ed the suc­cess of an ex­pand­ed The Falls at West Mall and Gulf City Mall, Movi­eTowne, Price Plaza and shop­ping club PriceS­mart. "The whole idea is cre­at­ing the des­ti­na­tion first; peo­ple will come af­ter. You can't get a spot in Trinci­ty Mall right now."

Due dili­gence and the FIU

Le Blanc men­tioned dur­ing the in­ter­view that the com­pa­ny now has to do its own due dili­gence on peo­ple pur­chas­ing prop­er­ty based on the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of T&T Act, 2009. "We have a lot more ad­min­is­tra­tive steps to take. You have to pro­vide a source of funds, who you are. If you have a com­pa­ny, do you have a cer­tifi­cate, who are your di­rec­tors? Our in­ter­nal sales peo­ple were trained by the FIU. "This process start­ed about three months ago. We had some­body come in and do a whole train­ing. It ex­pos­es us to what we do, con­cep­tu­al­ly. We have a com­pli­ance of­fi­cer in the com­pa­ny that makes sure we ad­here to the rules of the FIU in terms of the Act." The FIU was es­tab­lished to im­ple­ment the an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing poli­cies of the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force (FATF)-an in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion set up by the Group of Sev­en in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries. The main ob­jec­tive of the FATF is to de­vel­op and pro­vide in­ter­na­tion­al poli­cies to com­bat mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing. Le Blanc said un­der the due dili­gence process, every­one who has pur­chased HCL prop­er­ties has been "le­git, very le­git."