Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

De­spite no­tices that the erec­tion of a build­ing should not be com­plet­ed af­ter in­cur­ring sev­er­al breach­es, a new mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar three-storey struc­ture has been con­struct­ed on 35 & 37 De Ver­teuil Street in Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain.

The build­ing is now in dis­pute.

And, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, the lack of en­force­ment by the coun­try’s Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion led to the struc­ture be­ing com­plet­ed.

Ker­ry Pariag, the As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion con­firmed to the Sun­day Guardian that the di­vi­sion has an open com­plaint and en­force­ment mat­ter about the de­vel­op­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed to the Sun­day Guardian by a res­i­dent who ob­tained them through a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest (FOI) in Au­gust 2023, the build­ing’s own­ers have been grant­ed and de­nied per­mis­sion to de­vel­op the prop­er­ty sev­er­al times be­tween 2019 and 2023.

How­ev­er, the most re­cent no­tice, in March 2023, stat­ed that the de­vel­op­ment could not be com­plet­ed.

Time­line of build­ing

* In June 2019, in a let­ter from Town and Coun­try, the prop­er­ty own­ers were de­nied per­mis­sion as the ex­ist­ing de­vel­op­ment did not con­form to the site de­vel­op­ment stan­dards.

* In Oc­to­ber 2019, not­ing cer­tain de­fects and omis­sions, Town and Coun­try no­ti­fied the prop­er­ty own­ers that their ap­pli­ca­tion could not be com­plet­ed.

“1. Your site plans and floor plans are in­ac­cu­rate. Your el­e­va­tions sub­mit­ted vary sig­nif­i­cant­ly from your floor plans.”

“2. Your floor plans and site plans are in­con­sis­tent with el­e­va­tions sub­mit­ted for your pro­pos­al.”

“Notes: 1) Max­i­mum height of 8.5m at two storeys. 2) Win­dows shown on el­e­va­tions are not shown on floor plans. 3) It has been ob­served that the pro­posed de­vel­op­ment shows rooms that have no win­dows. All pro­posed bed­rooms must show at least one win­dow for ven­ti­la­tion pur­pos­es,” it said.

But by Jan­u­ary 2020, how­ev­er, Town and Coun­try grant­ed per­mis­sion to erect a guest house con­sist­ing of 11 bed­rooms, in ac­cor­dance with the plans sub­mit­ted as part of their ap­pli­ca­tion.

The con­di­tions re­quired for ap­proval were: that cer­tain build­ings were to be de­mol­ished up­on com­ple­tion, that as­pects of the build­ing meet the re­quire­ments of the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, and that the lo­cal au­thor­i­ty’s con­sent be grant­ed be­fore the be­gin­ning of de­vel­op­ment.

But just one month lat­er, in Feb­ru­ary 2020, Town and Coun­try sent a no­tice to the prop­er­ty own­ers that it was car­ry­ing out an unau­tho­rised build­ing. The di­vi­sion said the site does not con­form to the strict ad­her­ence to every arrange­ment and de­tail ap­pear­ing in ei­ther of the ap­proved plans.

They were ad­vised that they were in breach of the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 8(1) and were to im­me­di­ate­ly cease any fur­ther build­ing op­er­a­tions on the sub­ject site.

They were fur­ther ad­vised that with­in 28 days of the re­ceipt of the let­ter, they are re­quired to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion for plan­ning per­mis­sion pur­suant to Sec­tion 14(1) for the re­ten­tion of the build­ing or works de­scribed at 1 above.

The own­ers were re­fused per­mis­sion to de­vel­op a guest­house restau­rant again in an­oth­er let­ter dat­ed De­cem­ber 1, 2020, from the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to the no­tice, un­der the De­vel­op­ment Plan for T&T, the max­i­mum per­mit­ted height of any pro­posed build­ing should not ex­ceed two storeys to a max­i­mum of 8.5m from ground lev­el to the apex of the roof.

The no­tice fur­ther stat­ed that de­vel­op­ment works start­ed on site with­out rel­e­vant pro­pos­als, the de­vel­op­ment ex­ceeds the max­i­mum den­si­ty of bed­rooms al­lo­cat­ed for res­i­den­tial use and does not con­form to car park­ing re­quire­ments.

In Au­gust 2021, con­di­tion­al per­mis­sion was, once again, grant­ed by Town & Coun­try to car­ry out de­vel­op­ment at 35 & 37 De Ver­teuil Street but with the fol­low­ing con­di­tions:

• The ap­pli­cant was re­quired to ob­tain the rel­e­vant agency ap­provals from the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, WASA and the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion.

• The de­vel­op­ers were al­so re­quired to en­sure park­ing arrange­ments and ac­cess to the site met the re­quire­ments of the Traf­fic Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion.

• As seen in a March 2023 let­ter, the prop­er­ty own­ers were no­ti­fied that cer­tain de­fects/omis­sions were iden­ti­fied in the doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted, so the ap­pli­ca­tion can­not be com­plet­ed.

“Your ap­pli­ca­tion is there­fore be­ing re­turned un­de­ter­mined, so that these de­fects/omis­sions can be rec­ti­fied.

“Your ap­pli­ca­tion was queried on Feb­ru­ary 27, 2023, and you have not re­spond­ed with­in the stip­u­lat­ed time,” the let­ter said.

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the site on Wednes­day, the ex­ter­nal por­tion of the project looked close to com­ple­tion. Ac­cord­ing to res­i­dents, con­struc­tion be­gan in 2020. The own­er of the prop­er­ty is a Chi­nese na­tion­al. At­tempts to get in­to con­tact with the own­er for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

Pariag said the di­vi­sion was work­ing with the in­volved par­ties for an am­i­ca­ble res­o­lu­tion. How­ev­er, he in­di­cat­ed that he could not say any­thing fur­ther due to le­gal rea­sons.

Mean­while, mem­bers of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment ac­knowl­edged re­ceiv­ing re­ports of the de­vel­op­ment, say­ing they were aware of the mat­ter. De­spite at­tempts, it proved im­pos­si­ble to get more in­for­ma­tion about the mat­ter from the cor­po­ra­tion.

As mo­torists and pedes­tri­ans passed the new de­vel­op­ment at 35-37 De Ver­teuil Street, they glanced up and down two or three times with their eyes wide open. The three-storey build­ing, whose floors ap­pear sig­nif­i­cant­ly taller than an av­er­age floor, tow­ered over the rest of the hous­es on the street. To the front of the build­ing, six mam­moth white-pan­elled garage doors guard­ed the cream-coloured fortress, while four mas­sive win­dows on each side of the build­ing of­fered an un­ob­struct­ed view of the dis­trict. The build­ing, yet to be of­fi­cial­ly opened, is un­like any oth­er seen in Wood­brook be­fore, res­i­dents said.

“There is no oth­er build­ing this height in the en­tire­ty of Wood­brook. You can dri­ve up and down every street and there’s noth­ing else as tall, as big as this. It’s our night­mare,” said one res­i­dent.

“I’m con­vinced that there’s no stop­ping it. It seems like peo­ple are just turn­ing a blind eye,” said a De Ver­teuil Street res­i­dent.

“I’m more con­cerned about what it’s ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to be used for be­cause I don’t think any of us have got­ten an an­swer yet. We are al­ready af­fect­ed in Wood­brook with traf­fic and park­ing. While they have a cer­tain amount of park­ing un­der­ground, we don’t know what it is. We’ve heard it’s a night­club, a restau­rant. We’ve heard it’s a gam­bling club. We’ve heard it’s for res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty.

“They’ve brought up a lot of prop­er­ties in the area. I don’t know what is planned for that side of the place,” an­oth­er De Ver­teuil Street res­i­dent said.

With the ex­plo­sion of so­cial and leisure­ly ac­tiv­i­ty on Ari­api­ta Av­enue and its en­vi­rons, Wood­brook res­i­dents have been forced to adapt to a new life. Traf­fic and park­ing are a headache. At night, es­pe­cial­ly on week­ends, loud limers seek­ing to for­get the stress of the work­week roam the area af­ter leav­ing a restau­rant, bar, or casi­no. Old neigh­bours, many of whom be­come friends, say good­bye more fre­quent­ly af­ter be­ing of­fered sums of mon­ey they of­ten can’t refuse for their prop­er­ties.

 With each pass­ing year, Wood­brook be­comes in­creas­ing­ly com­mer­cial. But the com­mu­ni­ty of Wood­brook home­own­ers are no pushovers.

Ac­cord­ing to many Wood­brook res­i­dents, if the 35-37 De Ver­teuil Street de­vel­op­ment is al­lowed to open as is, then a dan­ger­ous prece­dent would be set be­cause they be­lieve the de­vel­op­ment is unau­tho­rised and con­tra­venes long-stand­ing de­vel­op­ment rules and reg­u­la­tions. They be­lieve the build­ing is too large and is not the man­dat­ed 15 feet away from the bound­ary. They al­so be­lieve it is com­mer­cial, as op­posed to res­i­den­tial, de­spite the own­ers ap­ply­ing for per­mis­sion to de­vel­op it as a res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty.

Res­i­dents are con­cerned that if the build­ing opens for busi­ness as a bar, restau­rant, club or guest house, it will cause fur­ther park­ing and traf­fic is­sues in their area, and will al­so at­tract sus­pi­cious char­ac­ters. They are al­so con­cerned it will open the flood­gates for sim­i­lar de­vel­op­ments to take over what re­mains of their Wood­brook.

The Wood­brook Res­i­dents Com­mit­tee agreed with the con­cerns ex­pressed by res­i­dents.

Un­re­al­is­tic reg­u­la­tions ham­per de­vel­op­ment–Ur­ban plan­ner

Ur­ban Plan­ner Ryan Dar­manie be­lieves that unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons is a long-stand­ing is­sue and it is one he fore­sees wors­en­ing. While de­scrib­ing en­force­ment as weak, he be­lieved that the State puts far too many re­sources in­to at­tempt­ing to en­force reg­u­la­tions that are un­re­al­is­tic giv­en the needs of the pop­u­la­tion, and the en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of in­ef­fi­cient use of land.

“We should be mak­ing it as easy and at­trac­tive as pos­si­ble for peo­ple to build in ex­ist­ing ur­ban ar­eas like POS that al­ready have con­ve­nient ac­cess to em­ploy­ment, ser­vices, util­i­ties, and oth­er ameni­ties.

“In­stead, our en­force­ment sys­tem can be ham­pered by mat­ters like peo­ple build­ing apart­ments in sin­gle-fam­i­ly-on­ly neigh­bour­hoods, in a coun­try with a wait­ing list for pub­lic hous­ing that ex­ceeds 180,000, or some­one con­struct­ing a four-storey build­ing in a high-de­mand ur­ban lo­ca­tion with per­fect ac­cess to ser­vices and ameni­ties and ex­treme­ly high land prices, but some tech­no­crat ar­bi­trar­i­ly de­cid­ed no build­ing should ex­ceed two storeys; or some­one build­ing a cor­ner store in a neigh­bour­hood that has no gro­cery with­in rea­son­able walk­ing dis­tance of res­i­dents, be­cause some tech­no­crat de­cid­ed that a cor­ner store pro­vid­ing ba­sic goods is some­how in­trin­si­cal­ly in­com­pat­i­ble with res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment,” he said.

Darmine placed unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment in­to two cat­e­gories: first­ly, breach­es of plan­ning, en­vi­ron­men­tal and oth­er de­vel­op­ment reg­u­la­tions that are un­rea­son­able and egre­gious. For ex­am­ple, build­ing right at the edge of a wa­ter­course, plac­ing pol­lut­ing and high nui­sance land us­es near to res­i­dences, or build­ing over a neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ty bound­ary.

The sec­ond cat­e­go­ry of unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment, he said, was more of a grey area.

“It is the unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment that re­sults from un­re­al­is­tic reg­u­la­tions eg, in ur­ban ar­eas like Port-of-Spain, land is scarce, and ex­pen­sive and lots are typ­i­cal­ly quite small.

Reg­u­la­tions that do not al­low a typ­i­cal lot of land to be utilised in an eco­nom­i­cal­ly pro­duc­tive way or ren­der de­vel­op­ment near im­pos­si­ble due to ba­sic phys­i­cal con­straints of lot size and di­men­sions will in­ad­ver­tent­ly en­cour­age peo­ple to flout the law or push de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ty out of de­sir­able ur­ban ar­eas and in­to sub­ur­ban, rur­al and sen­si­tive en­vi­ron­ments, where it is less de­sir­able from a plan­ning per­spec­tive,” Dar­manie said.

The ur­ban plan­ner be­lieved that the sec­ond cat­e­go­ry of unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment–the grey area–will like­ly in­crease as land and con­struc­tion prices in­crease, and as the de­mand for hous­ing in­creas­es as well, while the plan­ning sys­tem is still based on utopi­an ideals.

He said one of the biggest prob­lems is that the de­vel­op­ment of our plan­ning reg­u­la­tions is al­most com­plete­ly di­vorced from eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties and the dy­nam­ics of a mar­ket-based econ­o­my.

“Whether we like it or not, the cost of land and so­cial needs, and not some tech­no­crat, ul­ti­mate­ly large­ly de­ter­mines the ba­sics of where peo­ple live; what land is bought and sold; and how land is de­vel­oped. Plan­ners’ at­tempts to in­flu­ence the use of land through reg­u­la­tions will ul­ti­mate­ly fail if those two fac­tors are not ap­pre­ci­at­ed,” Dar­manie said.

Re­sources should be used more pru­dent­ly, fo­cus­ing on the first cat­e­go­ry of unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment, he sug­gest­ed. For this to hap­pen, he said, de­vel­op­ment reg­u­la­tions need to be up­dat­ed and brought in line with to­day’s needs, so that en­force­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties aren’t over­run.

“We are dri­ven by dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an think­ing in this coun­try. We care not to ques­tion the un­der­ly­ing ra­tio­nale be­hind our rules. Too many of us, pro­fes­sion­als in­clud­ed, are in­cu­ri­ous as to why peo­ple be­have the way they do. We on­ly see that peo­ple don’t do what we want and ex­pect them to, and as­sume it’s due to a lack of in­tel­li­gence or in­her­ent in­abil­i­ty to fol­low rules. We have to want to un­der­stand peo­ple’s mo­tives for any­thing to change.

“There is a se­ri­ous gen­er­a­tional bias at play in a lot of en­force­ment is­sues. Ex­ist­ing home­own­ers who trend old­er, tend to look af­ter their own in­ter­ests, ie, prop­er­ty val­ues. By keep­ing neigh­bour­hoods frozen in time, they be­lieve that their prop­er­ties will be worth more due to high de­mand and low sup­ply. For ex­am­ple, pre­vent­ing new hous­ing from be­ing built harms those who would like to be home­own­ers and tend to be younger. All of these is­sues need to be con­sid­ered in the dis­cus­sion about en­force­ment. It’s not sim­ply a black-and-white con­ver­sa­tion about peo­ple not fol­low­ing rules,” Dar­manie added.