Last Sat­ur­day, Bagshot Box Park came to life.

So­ca star Nailah Black­man per­formed her hits, while chil­dren played in the mi­ni-play­ground near­by as their par­ents pur­chased food and drink.

It was a vi­sion that had fi­nal­ly come in­to fruition for Ed­ward Aboud of George Aboud & Sons, the com­pa­ny that over­saw the de­vel­op­ment of the Mar­aval park.

“It’s been a long jour­ney. We took 35 re­pur­posed end-of-life con­tain­ers, brought them to­geth­er, gave them a new be­gin­ning. Hey, at Bagshot, it’s a com­mu­ni­ty space. It’s an ur­ban food park where it’s not a ster­ile en­vi­ron­ment, it’s an en­vi­ron­ment where we’ll dri­ve a full-time event cal­en­dar. We’ll have lots of en­ter­tain­ment on the week­ends,” said Aboud, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian at the park’s of­fi­cial open­ing on March 7.

The event in­deed marked a mile­stone af­ter a long pe­ri­od of in­ac­tiv­i­ty on what once had been one of Trinidad’s most fa­mous prop­er­ties.

Since 1999, fol­low­ing the de­mo­li­tion of the Bagshot Ho­tel, one of the coun­try’s most recog­nis­able colo­nial homes, the land has large­ly been va­cant

Bagshot Box Park is lo­cat­ed on Sad­dle Road, just af­ter Roy­al Palm Plaza Ho­tel.

Last Ju­ly, the Busi­ness Guardian high­light­ed plans for the Bagshot Box Park and its ode to the land’s his­to­ry. Those plans were first made pub­lic last year in the wake of the open­ing of Wendy’s fast-food con­tain­er out­let on the lot in April.

While the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing was held last week Sat­ur­day, sev­er­al cus­tomers con­firmed they had been to park be­fore as stores be­gan op­er­a­tions in the park ear­li­er this year.

Aboud said the new it­er­a­tion would not just ho­n­our the his­to­ry of the space but serve the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Bagshot is a com­mu­ni­ty space, as it did serve com­mu­ni­ties in the old days, it’s back to serv­ing this com­mu­ni­ty to­day,” said Aboud, who ex­plained that most of the stores open­ing at the food park were small­er op­er­a­tions as op­posed to ma­jor fran­chis­es.

“This is not an en­vi­ron­ment where es­tab­lished brands are; this is home­grown, ma­ma and pa­pa es­tab­lish­ments. I would say it’s like a tran­si­tion be­tween street food and en­ter­ing in­to an es­tab­lish­ment. So this is the type of en­vi­ron­ment we are try­ing to cre­ate here first,” he said.

Aboud ex­plained it was im­por­tant to give op­por­tu­ni­ties to small­er busi­ness­es, es­pe­cial­ly giv­ing the chal­leng­ing busi­ness cli­mate in the coun­try. This, he said, was part of the rea­son the Bagshot team pushed through with the de­vel­op­ment of the space.

“The prin­ci­pal point be­hind the Box Park is, this is an ur­ban food mall. So the cost for small to medi­um-sized busi­ness­es is very af­ford­able be­cause these spaces are small. They don’t have large build-outs and kitchen costs. So I think it serves the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment that we’re in now,” said Aboud, who ex­plained that there was al­so a long-term strat­e­gy in place.

“In busi­ness, you have to look to the fu­ture. Trinidad, we may be go­ing through some­thing of a rut right now, but let’s hope with good gov­er­nance that pos­i­tive things come out. “

Aboud ac­knowl­edged that there had been sev­er­al food parks that had opened in re­cent years, par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, he said he had tak­en notes of what those parks of­fered and worked on de­liv­er­ing op­tions which would bet­ter suit cus­tomers.

“I be­lieve we sep­a­rate our­selves with the en­ter­tain­ment com­po­nents that we at­tach to it. Like I said, it’s not a ster­ile en­vi­ron­ment we dri­ve. We are go­ing to dri­ve a full time en­ter­tain­ment cal­en­dar. We al­so have a sig­nif­i­cant car park. I found a lot of the box parks, and they’re re­al­ly good, by the way, the mod­els are great. There are a bunch of them around that are love­ly. It’s just some of them have chal­lenges with park­ing and some of the oth­er things we ob­serve,” he said, “What were the push points, or what were the weak links in terms of some of the oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tions, and try to serve the cus­tomer at the mar­ket a lit­tle bet­ter.”

Aboud con­firmed that ini­tial plans to open eight pick­le­ball courts re­main on the agen­da, with those courts set to open in April in ad­di­tion to new restau­rant op­tions and a bar.

Grow­ing Aranguez plaza

While the Bagshot mod­el has adopt­ed the con­tain­er mod­el, over in El So­cor­ro South/Aranguez, Icon Plaza has emerged with a more tra­di­tion­al plaza set­ting.

Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to its di­rec­tors, Ish­mael Ali, Sarah Ali-Dawar and Fa­heed Ali, who ex­plained that they too had opt­ed to push through on the de­vel­op­ment de­spite var­i­ous eco­nom­ic chal­lenges in the coun­try.

“Icon Plaza has been a long-term project, so eco­nom­ic con­di­tions were al­ways some­thing we care­ful­ly con­sid­ered dur­ing the plan­ning process. Be­cause of that, the de­vel­op­ment was ap­proached thought­ful­ly rather than rushed.

Like many projects, there were chal­lenges along the way, but our team re­mained adapt­able and fo­cused on build­ing some­thing sus­tain­able for the long term,” the Icon Plaza di­rec­tors told the Busi­ness Guardian, via a writ­ten re­sponse on Fri­day.

“The idea of de­vel­op­ing a plaza was in the mak­ing for a very long time . We al­ways en­vi­sioned cre­at­ing a mod­ern and invit­ing shop­ping hub that has a well-cu­rat­ed mix of busi­ness­es so that it can serve as a one-stop shop,” the di­rec­tors said.

The team felt the lo­ca­tion was strate­gic and was not fazed by the open­ing of oth­er re­cent de­vel­op­ments near­by, such as Xtra Foods Plaza and the Aranguez Food Park. In­deed, the team was heart­ened by the se­ries of de­vel­op­ments.

“Over the years we ob­served that Aranguez South was de­vel­op­ing rapid­ly and be­com­ing an im­por­tant hub for both busi­ness and en­ter­tain­ment. Es­tab­lish­ing Icon Plaza here felt like a nat­ur­al fit. Lo­ca­tion is key to any suc­cess­ful de­vel­op­ment, and Aranguez sits at a con­ve­nient mid­point along the East West Cor­ri­dor. It of­fers easy ac­cess for com­muters while al­so serv­ing the sur­round­ing res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties. Icon Plaza is lo­cat­ed less than a minute off the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way and fea­tures mul­ti­ple ac­cess points, mak­ing it quick and con­ve­nient for cus­tomers to vis­it,” the Icon Plaza di­rec­tors said.

While con­struc­tion is still un­der­way at parts of the Plaza, Rit­u­als opened a new lo­ca­tion there three weeks ago, while Pop­eye’s opened a restau­rant in the plaza in Jan­u­ary. They too are look­ing for­ward to more busi­ness­es open­ing their doors at the Plaza in the near fu­ture.

“Raw Fit­ness Gym will soon be cel­e­brat­ing its grand open­ing at Icon Plaza. It is ex­pect­ed to be one of the largest and most mod­ern fit­ness fa­cil­i­ties in the area. A few well-es­tab­lished busi­ness­es are al­ready up and run­ning, in­clud­ing TTIVF, one of the most suc­cess­ful and ad­vanced fer­til­i­ty clin­ics in the re­gion. In ad­di­tion, sev­er­al oth­er busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing restau­rants and bars, from around Trinidad are prepar­ing to open their doors at the plaza in the com­ing months, fur­ther ex­pand­ing the range of shop­ping, din­ing, and lifestyle op­tions avail­able to vis­i­tors.”

Busi­ness­es soon to open at the Plaza in­clude Flamin­gle Cafe, which has been teas­ing its lo­ca­tion at the Plaza since late last year and New York Slice.

The Icon Plaza di­rec­tors said they would con­tin­ue to de­vel­op with the in­ten­tion to main­tain a high stan­dard of shop­ping, din­ing, and en­ter­tain­ment in the hope that the plaza would be­come a house­hold name.