Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

The Wright­son Road sky­line is set to un­der­go a sig­nif­i­cant facelift soon as the Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion Com­pa­ny of T&T Lim­it­ed (Pow­er­Gen) has an­nounced plans to de­mol­ish its Port-of-Spain pow­er plant and its icon­ic four tow­ers.

As a re­sult of this planned work, Pow­er­Gen is now invit­ing mem­bers of its neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ty to a vir­tu­al pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on Thurs­day.

Pow­er­Gen said the planned sched­ule of works on the de­com­mis­sion­ing and de­mo­li­tion of its Port-of-Spain pow­er plant will be con­duct­ed “in ac­cor­dance with in­dus­try stan­dards in Health, Safe­ty, and En­vi­ron­ment.”

The vir­tu­al pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion is sched­uled to be held at 5 p.m. on Thurs­day.

The link for the meet­ing is avail­able on Pow­er­Gen’s web­site.

“Our Port-of-Spain neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ty stretch­es to French Street on the west, Wright­son Road on the south, Vic­to­ria Square West on the east and Ari­api­ta Av­enue on the north,” a pub­lic no­tice by Pow­er­Gen stat­ed.

The Port-of-Spain pow­er sta­tion had been a pow­er gen­er­a­tion site for 120 years un­til its de­com­mis­sion­ing on Jan­u­ary 14, 2016.

“It was on the cur­rent site of the Port-of-Spain Pow­er Sta­tion in 1895, on the then Ari­api­ta Es­tate, that an Amer­i­can busi­ness­man by the name of Edgar Tripp es­tab­lished the Elec­tric Light and Pow­er Com­pa­ny. Own­er­ship of the plant would lat­er tran­si­tion to the gov­ern­ment in 1937 when the plant was pur­chased by the State,” ac­cord­ing to Pow­er­Gen’s records.

Con­struc­tion of the Port-of- Spain plant, with its four icon­ic stacks, be­gan in 1961.

“Port-of-Spain Pow­er sta­tion has not on­ly served as a source of elec­tri­cal pow­er over its his­to­ry. Since 2012, the plant’s Wright­son Road perime­ter wall be­came a new show­case for the artis­tic tal­ent of our na­tion’s youth, gen­er­at­ing sup­port for the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of the cre­ative ex­pres­sion of fu­ture na­tion­al artists and vi­sion­ar­ies,” Pow­er­Gen stat­ed.