To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) chief sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day said the As­sem­bly in­her­it­ed a poor­ly ex­e­cut­ed in­vest­ment in the ren­o­va­tion of the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel and Dive Cen­tre, which has cost the is­land mil­lions.

Au­gus­tine, at the open­ing of the ho­tel ear­li­er yes­ter­day, said the project re­quired an ad­di­tion­al $2.3 mil­lion to fix var­i­ous in­ad­e­qua­cies af­ter the ini­tial $27 mil­lion re­fur­bish­ment. The ren­o­va­tion was ini­tial­ly han­dled by whol­ly state-owned project man­ag­er Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott).

The prop­er­ty was hand­ed over in Feb­ru­ary last year, but could not be opened for busi­ness­es.

He ex­plained there was a need to “cus­tom or­der pa­tio fur­ni­ture, safes for the rooms, irons and iron­ing boards, bins, pil­lows, lamps, cof­fee ma­chines. Im­prop­er­ly sized equip­ment at laun­dry and the bar. We had to do com­ple­tion of works to achieve the fire cer­tifi­cate.

"This was a brand-new sec­ond-hand I guess. We had to do ter­mite treat­ment."

To re­solve these is­sues, the THA en­gaged Eco-In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go (E-ID­COT) for the ad­di­tion­al works, and now the Man­ta Lodge is fi­nal­ly set to open un­der the man­age­ment of that com­pa­ny.

Au­gus­tine not­ed that the As­sem­bly ini­tial­ly sought pri­vate op­er­a­tors but re­ceived no suit­able bids. He said the fa­cil­i­ty must turn a prof­it de­spite the hefty $29 mil­lion in­vest­ment, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “in­her­it­ing a bad in­vest­ment.”

Au­gus­tine lament­ed, “We in­her­it­ed this project with Ude­cott, and Ude­cott es­sen­tial­ly charged the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly $27 mil­lion… But some­times, when you get a home that’s com­plet­ed and the con­trac­tor gives you the keys, you some­times have to go af­ter the con­trac­tor and do more work to make it liv­able. And that was the case with Man­ta Lodge.”

He said, “This might just be the most ex­pen­sive ho­tel room in the coun­try. But, part of fix­ing it means that you will in­her­it a bad in­vest­ment and when you in­her­it a bad in­vest­ment you just to roll with the punch­es, bring it to com­ple­tion and find a way to make prof­it on the back­end.”

The ho­tel, which is lo­cat­ed in Spey­side, has 20 rooms, a restau­rant and bar.

The Man­ta Lodge, along with Sanc­tu­ary Vil­las in Black Rock, had been a long-run­ning blot on the page of the THA af­ter both ho­tels were ac­quired by To­ba­go’s leg­isla­tive body in 2015 for an es­ti­mat­ed $32 mil­lion.

While Man­ta Lodge was ac­quired in 2015, it has not been in op­er­a­tion since then. Many crit­ics ques­tioned the pur­chase as there ap­peared to be no fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies done be­fore the prop­er­ties were ac­quired by the THA.

The Man­ta Lodge how­ev­er had been seen as a niche op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op a ho­tel catered for div­ing en­thu­si­asts.

In June, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke al­leged that the re­fur­bished Man­ta Lodge in Spey­side was a den of in­iq­ui­ty.

He said he was very con­cerned about the dol­lars spent to bring Man­ta Lodge and ac­cused Au­gus­tine of turn­ing the ho­tel in­to a “romp­ing shop” for cer­tain elite per­sons.