Shas­tri Boodan

The New City Mall in Port-of-Spain is ex­pect­ed to get an up­grade in the new year. This good news came on Christ­mas Eve when Adri­an Leonce, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment and Mont­gomery Guy, Chair­man of the Board of Di­rec­tors of Port-of-Spain Shop­ping Com­plex Lim­it­ed (POSS­CL), which falls un­der the purview of the min­istry, met with ten­ants to see first hand how these small busi­ness­es of East Port-of-Spain were thriv­ing for the hol­i­day sea­son.

Leonce not­ed that New City Mall and East Side Plaza, lo­cat­ed at 32 Char­lotte Street, fell un­der the am­bit of POSS­CL, and had the pri­ma­ry aim of giv­ing the res­i­dents of East Port-of-Spain a space that would al­low them to de­vel­op and grow a busi­ness.  He said to the ten­ants that it was im­por­tant to him to hear what ob­sta­cles and chal­lenges they faced so that so­lu­tions can be de­rived to en­sure that they can nav­i­gate their way to suc­cess.

Leonce said that the on­go­ing de­vel­op­ment of East Port-of-Spain was not just an in­fra­struc­tur­al one but more im­por­tant­ly, the de­vel­op­ment of its peo­ple through en­tre­pre­neur­ship and self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Guy stat­ed that plans were afoot for 2023 to en­hance and de­vel­op the en­tre­pre­neur­ial skillset of ten­ants of both New City Mall and East Side Plaza to en­sure that their busi­ness­es were sus­tain­able and can pro­vide in­creased em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for oth­ers as well.

Guy added that some space at these malls would be ded­i­cat­ed to lo­cal ar­ti­sans to fur­ther grow their busi­ness­es and be po­si­tioned to not on­ly pro­vide their "Made in Trinidad" prod­ucts to cus­tomers at home but to al­so ex­port re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

He said that these malls will soon be made a Wi-Fi zone, giv­ing ten­ants and cus­tomers ac­cess to the in­ter­net.

Guy saw this as a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for the over 200 mall ten­ants, as hav­ing in­ter­net ac­cess, cou­pled with train­ing, would al­low their small busi­ness­es to take of­fer their prod­ucts and ser­vices in the on­line en­vi­ron­ment.

Leonce said that the Board of Di­rec­tors of POSS­CL had their man­date and work was al­ready on the way.