One of the state’s dor­mant build­ings in Port of Spain is set to get a makeover.

Last week Wednes­day, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) list­ed a re­quest for pro­pos­als (RFP) for work to be done on Trinidad House on its web­site.

Trinidad House, which runs the length of Trea­sury Street be­tween St Vin­cent Street and Ed­ward Street in Port of Spain and is sand­wiched be­tween the Trea­sury Build­ing and Ed­u­ca­tion Tow­er, had housed of­fices of the Board of In­land Rev­enue up to 2017.

The build­ing has been large­ly un­used since those BIR of­fices moved to the IRD Tow­er on Ajax Street in the gov­ern­ment cam­pus.

The RFP, which calls for de­sign-build ser­vices for the Trinidad House Fa­cade, is open for sub­mis­sions un­til May 17.

The ten­der process for this project will be con­duct­ed via UDe­COTT’s e-ten­der sys­tem.

Last week, a poster an­nounc­ing the planned re­fur­bish­ment of the build­ing was placed on the Ed­ward Street wall of Trinidad House.

The poster de­picts a con­cep­tu­al de­sign of the build­ing trans­formed in­to a Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tive Sup­port build­ing.

These dis­plays fol­low con­cerns raised about the grow­ing num­ber of un­used build­ings in down­town Port of Spain, with Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to do more to re­turn com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty to the cap­i­tal.

In the April 2, 2023 edi­tion of Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian, Ja­maican ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­sign­er, Chan Ash­ing, al­so ques­tioned the con­tin­u­ous ne­glect of old­er build­ings in down­town Port of Spain, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to green­light con­struc­tion of new build­ings around the city.

In many cas­es, Ash­ing ar­gued there were sev­er­al state-owned build­ings that could be re­pur­posed at a frac­tion of the cost of con­struct­ing a new build­ing.