Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore yes­ter­day un­veiled a $100 mil­lion project for a new head­quar­ters for the steel­pan in Port-of-Spain.

She made the an­nounce­ment hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, dur­ing the Na­tion­al Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val on Sun­day, re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment had agreed to give Pan Trin­ba­go the old postal ser­vice head­quar­ters at Wright­son Road, in ex­change for the piece of land it had start­ed a build­ing on over a decade ago.

Ad­dress­ing the new plan dur­ing its an­nu­al Thanks­giv­ing Ser­vice at PanTrin­ba­go’s cur­rent head­quar­ters on Dun­don­ald Street, Port-of-Spain, Ram­sey-Moore said the de­sign for the struc­ture has al­ready been ap­proved and will be built by Ude­COTT.

Not­ing it will be built be­tween the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel and the T&T Fire Ser­vice head­quar­ters, she said, “Pan Trin­ba­go had to ne­go­ti­ate hard. Over 20 years suf­fer­ing in the wilder­ness down the road. Our busi­ness on the Wa­ter­front is to en­sure that we have ad­di­tion­al rev­enue streams...It will be right there, as you know, it’s the cen­tre place for busi­ness, the cruise ships come in, the en­ter­tain­ment space, and all of that. I think it will be an­oth­er glo­ri­ous day for pan. We want to say to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, we ap­pre­ci­ate all that you have done.”

Ram­sey-Moore said it will be a six-storey struc­ture and take the shape of a steel­pan, where a mu­se­um, per­for­mance hall and rooftop din­ing will be fea­tures. Sev­er­al busi­ness­es will al­so be shar­ing the space and of­fices will be rent­ed out to Gov­ern­ment, in an ef­fort to make the head­quar­ters in­to a rev­enue gen­er­a­tor.

Pan Trin­ba­go will be the ma­jor own­er of the new build­ing.

Ram­sey-Moore al­so said cur­rent­ly, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has clean au­dits un­der their ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate T&T are start­ing to be­lieve in Pan Trin­ba­go more and more.

Ram­sey-Moore said next week, dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence with the Prime Min­is­ter, the com­ple­tion date will be rolled out.

Seem­ing­ly ad­dress­ing the re­cent de­bate over whether the tas­sa was al­so wor­thy of be­ing put on the Coat of Arms along­side the pan, she said, “I am not get­ting in­to any toss up with any tas­sa, be­cause all I have to prove my point is to bring the tas­sa on stage to play the na­tion­al in­stru­ment and to bring a steel­pan: who will play the na­tion­al an­them? The tas­sa or steel­pan? And then we will have a shootout be­tween a tas­sa group and Des­per­a­does,” Ram­sey-Moore said.

Dur­ing the thanks­giv­ing ser­vice, sev­er­al steel or­ches­tra bands were blessed, in­clud­ing Pan­gelics Steel Or­ches­tra, Laven­tille Ser­e­naders Steel Or­ches­tra, and Nos­trand Sym­pho­ny.