The re­cent news sur­round­ing Shang­hai Con­struc­tion’s ter­mi­na­tion no­tice to the Gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing con­struc­tion of the Cen­tral Block of the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, was not the most wel­com­ing for those look­ing for­ward to the Port of Spain re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion project.

The con­struc­tion was one of sev­er­al high­light­ed by the Min­istry of Plan­ning as part of its thrust to the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion the cap­i­tal city.

How­ev­er de­spite the bad news there, Port of Spain May­or Joel Mar­tinez is hope­ful oth­er projects will gath­er pace in the near fu­ture as well spark re­newed in­ter­est in the city. He con­firmed that a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work in terms of con­sul­ta­tions had been done.

“A num­ber of projects that were ini­ti­at­ed or in­di­cat­ed, the con­sul­ta­tion as­pect of it, in some in­stances have al­ready tran­spired. Where­by as you would have known we had a con­sul­ta­tion with the Wood­brook res­i­dents with re­gard to Ari­api­ta Av­enue and we al­so had a con­sul­ta­tion with the res­i­dents of Pic­cadil­ly area and the HDC with re­gard to the project that’s sup­posed to take place there” the May­or said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian.

He ad­mit­ted that some of the projects were de­pen­dent on cur­rent ten­ants agree­ing to move or, in the case of the Des­per­a­does Steel Or­ches­tra, fi­nal­ly get­ting its own fa­cil­i­ty com­plet­ed.

“I was told at a res­i­den­tial out­fit sup­posed to take place at the cor­ner of Tra­garete Road and Vic­to­ria Av­enue where the print­ery was,” Mar­tinez said. “I think that they were wait­ing on the East Port-of-Spain sit­u­a­tion with re­gard to where the des­per­a­does steel or­ches­tra was. Once Des­pers move, then that project will start but in the mean­time they’re work­ing on the project in East Port of Spain. They had to do some re­design­ing of the build­ing and then we’ll turn the sod on it. And so it’s now a mat­ter of work tak­ing place on be­tween George and Nel­son streets to get that fa­cil­i­ty go­ing. And then Des­pers will move and then we’ll start the oth­er fa­cil­i­ty.”

Oth­er projects have pro­gressed sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as the de­com­mis­sion­ing of the Pow­er­gen Pow­er plant on Wright­son may have robbed the city of the one its more recog­nis­able land­marks, but for the May­or it is sign that progress is be­ing made.

While oth­er signs of progress were not as vis­i­ble, the May­or said the process­es be­ing fol­lowed were equal­ly im­por­tant to en­sure that what is achieved is prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed for the ben­e­fit of the city.

“Any­time you’re do­ing any­thing ma­jor it re­quires plan­ning,” Mar­tinez said.

“When it was launched the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion of what was to be done to bring this city to re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion mode or bring it to a point where we can feel that the city of Port of Spain has grown and pro­gressed and de­vel­oped would have re­quired some out­lined plan­ning,” he said.

This ex­e­cu­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant es­pe­cial­ly in the midst of the pan­dem­ic, where many hours of work has al­ready been lost due to the pan­dem­ic.

“When it starts to build, it starts to build. That’s con­struc­tion you know. But in the mean­time once you get the plan­ning right and you get the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion right, and we know ex­act­ly what we’re do­ing be­cause every­thing that we have to do has to cre­ate some sus­tain­abil­i­ty and it has to cre­ate some syn­er­gy around the city,” he said.

The May­or con­tin­ued: “Ob­vi­ous­ly, you know, COVID has af­fect­ed a lot of the work that is be­ing done be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly, there’s a lack of per­son­nel in some ar­eas, and be­cause peo­ple would have prob­a­bly been out with COVID or they would have been in con­tact with pri­ma­ry con­tact and things like that. So that has slowed down the process a bit. But things are start­ing to re-en­gage it­self again,” he said.

The re­lax­ing of COVID-19 re­stric­tions has al­so brought good news for the city, as com­merce in­creased in the re­cent Christ­mas sea­son. The May­or is hope­ful that the City will be­gin to flour­ish even more through­out the year.

“We want to start back with many parks and squares. We want to be able to en­cour­age peo­ple to come back in to and use the city as that is hap­pen­ing from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive. Now, as you can see, there’s a lot of ve­hi­cles in the city of Port-of-Spain and busi­ness­es open and so on. So we have we’ve had a de­cent Christ­mas and hope­ful­ly, we will we will have a very good 2022.”

He saw the Taste of Car­ni­val as po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties to the city as well as nu­mer­ous stake­hold­ers who had lost a ma­jor source of in­come dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

The vast ma­jor­i­ty of the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Project is cur­rent­ly tied to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, but the May­or said the City Cor­po­ra­tion is al­so work­ing on beau­ti­fi­ca­tion projects in the City to en­cour­age more vis­its to the cap­i­tal.

“We al­so em­barked on a beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project, which is the Broad­way project, which most of the cit­i­zens who come from all the dif­fer­ent parts of Trinidad to the City Gate area.

“They en­ter port has been through Broad­way, and that area is a bit un­de­sir­able in terms of when you look at it the aes­thet­ics of it.

“And if we can ac­tu­al­ly start ex­e­cut­ing on our beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project to have and plant some trees and bring out the pave­ments about four feet on ei­ther side,” he said, ex­press­ing plans to ad­just the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade as well to fur­ther change the at­mos­phere for those en­ter­ing the City.

“Put some struc­ture to the taxi stand and maybe cob­ble­stone some of the road there and then add the am­bi­ent mu­sic to the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade and then en­cour­age the busi­ness­es around there to do some de­vel­op­ment work on the park and al­so on their build­ings.” he end­ed.