Garcia: No plans in place for former Speaker's house

Udecott chairman Noel Garcia said there are currently no definite plans in place for the former Speaker’s House in St Clair.

He said the corporation will be meeting with the National Trust in the upcoming weeks to plot a way forward.

The building, at 9 Mary Street, is over 100 years old. It was occupied by Speakers of the House of Representatives up to 1995.

Repairs began in 1996, with approximately $0.6 million being spent on renovations up to 2010.

The building is slowly becoming dilapidated, as the doors are boarded up, palm branches have fallen onto the roof, chipped paint, rust and mould on some of the railings, sagging and flaking awnings, falling pillars on the walkway and vines growing on the ventilation grilles. The roof and windows remain intact, and the grass seems to have been trimmed recently.

The last speaker to live in the house was Occah Seapaul, who was put under house arrest there between August 3 and 7, 1995, after she was accused by Prime Minister Patrick Manning of intending to suspend two government ministers and conspiring to overthrow the government. The former PM invoked a state of emergency to be able to carry out this order.

Since then, no Speaker has lived in the house. They have stayed in their own homes and received housing allowances.

In 2017, Cabinet gave the Foreign and Caricom Affairs Ministry approval to build its head office at the site. This sparked protest and calls for stakeholder consultation from conservation activists and organisations, including the TT Institute of Architects, the NGO Citizens for Conservation, and the National Trust. Citizens for Conservation and the National Trust met with Udecott, the Ministry of Planning and Town and Country Planning to try to get them all to reconsider plans to replace the house with a multi-storey building.

Speaking to Newsday on Monday, Garcia said, “We had originally had planned to put Ministry of Foreign Affairs in that location, but there was some protest from the various groups who said it was a heritage site and it was a listed building.

"So we withdrew from that, and at this point we are unsure as to what is the next step. So we would meet with the National Trust, which is the body responsible by law for seeing listed buildings and plot a way forward. But as it stands now, we have no definite plans, But we will be meeting with the National Trust in the coming weeks.”

National Trust chairman Margaret McDowell said the organisation had not heard anything recently but had its feelers out and was trying to find out what is going on.

Citizens for Conservation president Rudylynn Roberts said she had heard nothing about any official plans for the building.

“As far as I know, the building is in the care of Udecott. Last I heard, there was discussion about demolishing it and National Trust and Citizens for Conservation got involved in some discussions. A press release was done and they said they were going to restore it, but that was a couple years ago and I don’t know what has been done in that time as yet.”

Roberts said the building should be restored and preserved as a heritage site.

“A building like that needs to be fixed, there’s no point having a building like that and leaving it to crumble. That building is part of the Heritage District, and it’s also zoned by Town and Country Planning for single-family use, so it is to the advantage of everybody concerned to keep it that way and to consider it a heritage site.

"It would be nice if it could be repaired before it falls apart.”