NH In­ter­na­tion­al (Caribbean) Ltd has signed a US$19.4 mil­lion con­tract with Rod­ney Bay City Cen­tre Ltd (RBCC), to con­struct the first phase of the Rod­ney Bay City Cen­tre in Gros Islet, Saint Lu­cia.

Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at NH, Cia­ran Con­lon, praised this part­ner­ship as, he says, NH has been en­trust­ed to make yet an­oth­er mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to Saint Lu­cia which start­ed 30 years ago.

The CEO was joined by a di­rec­tor of Rod­ney Bay City Cen­tre Ltd, as well as the project man­ag­er for the de­vel­op­ment, Tarek Ho­sein of En­gi­neer­ing An­a­lyt­i­ca Ltd, to sign the con­tract on Au­gust 30, at NH’s head of­fice in St James, Trinidad.

NH has al­ready com­menced mo­bil­i­sa­tion and is set to be­gin ac­tu­al site con­struc­tion from Oc­to­ber 14, 2024 on the first phase of the project. It will in­clude the head of­fice and the Rod­ney Bay branch of Re­pub­lic Bank (EC) Ltd, a 122-ve­hi­cle car park as well as mul­ti­ple restau­rants, shops and a board­walk.

The RBCC project rep­re­sents the sec­ond ma­jor project part­ner­ship be­tween NH and this af­fil­i­ate group of com­pa­nies with­in the last three years; the oth­er most no­tably be­ing the Or­ange Grove Plaza, which has emerged to be­come a Saint Lu­cian land­mark.

Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Emile Elias says “Our con­tin­ued work as a trust­ed con­struc­tion part­ner of Blue In­vest­ment and RBCC is adding to the de­vel­op­ment of St Lu­cia, of this, we can be proud.”

The project will cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for many St Lu­cians, NH said in a news re­lease.

The en­tire Rod­ney Bay City Cen­tre will com­prise five mul­ti-sto­ry build­ings and in­cor­po­rates com­mer­cial, re­tail, res­i­den­tial and recre­ation­al spaces, de­signed by promi­nent Caribbean ar­chi­tect, Stephen Mendes.

The first phase is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by NH in mid-No­vem­ber 2025 with fur­ther phas­es ex­pect­ed to com­mence in the near fu­ture.

In April, NH In­ter­na­tion­al signed a con­tract with the Gov­ern­ment of St Lu­cia to con­struct a Halls of Jus­tice com­plex, by way of a Build Own Lease Trans­fer (BOLT) arrange­ment.

The com­plex is lo­cat­ed in Cas­tries, the cap­i­tal of St Lu­cia, and would com­prise three ju­di­cial di­vi­sions: crim­i­nal, civ­il and fam­i­ly.

The fa­cil­i­ty will con­sist of 14 court­rooms, six mag­is­trate’s cham­bers, nine judge’s cham­bers, 11 wit­ness rooms, 10 ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices, a law li­brary, one 26-seater con­fer­ence room, one po­lice post, hold­ing cells and a high-se­cu­ri­ty de­fen­dants dock in the crim­i­nal court. The to­tal floor space of the court fa­cil­i­ties is es­ti­mat­ed to be 126,345 square feet.

The to­tal in­vest­ment cost is an es­ti­mat­ed US$61 mil­lion (EC$164.7 mil­lion), in­cludes full de­sign ser­vices (at 10 per cent of con­struc­tion cost), build­ings that are ful­ly out­fit­ted as well as the con­struc­tion of the build­ings.

Elias pro­vid­ed a break­down of the el­e­ments of de­sign, con­struc­tion and out­fit­ting:

• De­sign—ar­chi­tec­tur­al; struc­tur­al; in­te­ri­or de­sign; me­chan­i­cal/elec­tri­cal/plumb­ing (MEP) and civ­il

• Con­struc­tion—two build­ings and con­nec­tor bridge to­talling 126,345 sq ft

• Out­fit­ting—All fur­ni­ture-work­sta­tions/con­fer­ence ta­bles and chairs/desks/lounge fur­ni­ture; ac­cess con­trol sys­tems; CCTV; fire pro­tec­tion sys­tems; air con­di­tion­ing sys­tems; file stor­age sys­tems; da­ta/com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems (phones/wifi etc); au­dio-vi­su­al sys­tems for courts; judge podi­ums; court bench­es; kitchen ap­pli­ances; hold­ing cells; base­ment park­ing and a stand-by gen­er­a­tor sys­tems.