Why not build houses at Goodwood Park?

The grapevine has it that when a big developer wanted to build luxury, high rise apartments on the top of the hill at Goodwood Park, Government put a large spoke in his wheel and stopped the development even as the site preparations were taking place with lots of cuttings and truckings going on. Anyhow, whatever happened resulted in no luxury apartment being built. App-arently the neighbours didn’t like the idea and it was shot down.

Why is it that trendy apartments for Goodwood hill are bad, but less trendy apartments for a relatively small parcel of land in already packed Federation Park, are good?

Residents of Federation Park say that the most you could get out of the acre or so of ground is four or five lots. If Government sold them on the open market it would pick up over $20 Million. That is straight profit. The chances are that it could not make a net figure of over $20 Million quickly, if it first built expensive apartments and then sold them. So why not sell the land and use the $20 Million-plus to help housing in depressed areas?

No wonder there are rumours at high levels in the PNM that perhaps certain representatives should think of going back to their original careers and forget politics.

MARK CICERO

Port-of-Spain