An­drea Perez-Sobers

Some ten­ants at Trinci­ty Mall are say­ing the in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties over the past few months is af­fect­ing their dai­ly sales.

On June 22, two peo­ple were robbed of $600 each, while wait­ing in the park­ing lot of the mall. And, two days lat­er, a gun­man fa­tal­ly shot so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer Kevon “Yank Boss” Solomon as he parked his car in the mall.

Busi­ness Guardian spoke with a few ten­ants on Tues­day, who said the mall’s se­cu­ri­ty needs to pa­trol more reg­u­lar­ly to main­tain a high­er lev­el of safe­ty.

Valenti­no Singh, re­tired ed­i­tor and own­er of the sports mem­o­ra­bil­ia store, Fan Club, said day by day crim­i­nals are be­com­ing more em­bold­ened and own­ers have to be con­cerned about meet­ing their month­ly ex­pens­es.

“Some kind of mech­a­nism needs to be put in place to ward off po­ten­tial ban­dits and if that is not done, you would find that peo­ple would be scep­ti­cal to come to the mall. Some of us are al­so very dis­ap­point­ed with the man­age­ment of the mall which is the Home Con­struc­tion Ltd (HCL) group of com­pa­nies be­cause if you try to get on to some­one at the of­fice, some ten­ants are al­ways told that they would be giv­en a call­back but that nev­er hap­pens.

“We would have pre­ferred a meet­ing so that the store own­ers could have spo­ken and of­fered so­lu­tions that can help keep the pub­lic safe while shop­ping. No amount of sales, or pro­mo­tions, will at­tract peo­ple to the mall if they do not feel safe,” Singh lament­ed.

He not­ed that peo­ple have ex­pressed to him that they no longer feel safe shop­ping at Trinci­ty Mall as there is now a greater sense of un­ease.

“The mall man­age­ment ap­pears clue­less and the com­mon ground is to come to­geth­er with the ten­ants. We are in this to­geth­er, be­cause crime is not just con­fined to Trinci­ty Mall, it’s all over the coun­try, so we are not blam­ing any­body be­cause of the sit­u­a­tion.

“What we are say­ing is that when we find a so­lu­tion, this is not the time for man­age­ment to bury their heads in the sand, as things are on­ly get­ting worse. The blind can­not be lead­ing the blind,” the own­er of Fan Club ex­pressed.

He said de­spite these is­sues some ten­ants are not pre­pared to move to East Gate Mall, which is north of Trinci­ty Mall along the Trinci­ty Cen­tral Road, due to the high rents and oth­er fac­tors.

“The re­al­i­ty is Trinci­ty Mall still has the es­sen­tial stores and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions for the pub­lic to run to and the mall does not have that win­dow, hence why HCL man­age­ment should ad­dress all safe­ty is­sues so that the mall does not be­come a ghost town,” Singh said.

One ten­ant, who did not wish to be named, be­moaned that the man­age­ment is un­ap­proach­able and there is no re­dress to any is­sue.

“The man­age­ment has to un­der­stand that own­ers of stores work hard to build their clien­tele, and with the in­crease in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties, it af­fects the dai­ly sales.

The ten­ant said be­tween 2020, when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic be­gan, to 2023, over 30 store own­ers have left the mall due to the rent not be­ing low­ered and, in some cas­es, safe­ty rea­sons.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment about the se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, HCL’s chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Richard Le Blanc said that mall man­age­ment added more se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel fol­low­ing the in­ci­dents.

Le Blanc al­so not­ed that a cou­ple of ini­tia­tives were im­ple­ment­ed, along­side the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and this was re­layed to some ten­ants.

“Our se­cu­ri­ty was in­stru­men­tal in ap­pre­hend­ing the rob­bers that struck at the car park re­cent­ly. In terms of erect­ing a po­lice post in the mall’s car park, HCL man­age­ment has spo­ken to the head of the po­lice ser­vice in the East­ern Di­vi­sion on such steps, but I can­not say for sure if that would be­come a re­al­i­ty un­til I get con­fir­ma­tion,” Le Blanc re­marked.

Since 2017, Trinci­ty Mall and its com­mer­cial cen­tre have been up for sale.