A SECTION of the underused multimillion-dollar Barbados Tourism Investment Inc. (BTI) car park will soon be transformed into a new facility to house the Immigration Department.
The ground floor and some of the first floor will be converted into office space while the rest of the car park will remain as is, according to BTI chief executive officer Stuart Layne. The Immigration Department is expected to take up the entire bottom level and a part of the first floor.
“The rest will remain a parking facility first for the Immigration Department and then for the general public. That is basically the plan,” said Layne.
He told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that once the deadline for tenders was past, they would be making a selection by October “with a view to commencing construction towards the end of this year”.
Following a call for bids, a number of potential contractors visited the site and made their assessments. They would have surveyed the building and attended site meetings before submitting their proposals. The tendering process started on August 21 and ended today.
“So hopefully within four weeks [of the closing date for bids] we should be able to make some award of a contract and certainly have full outfitting of the facility done by next year because our objective is to get Immigration into the new facility as soon as possible,” he said.
The initial plan for the Princess Alice Highway facility was to have a number of shop spaces. However, that was not seen as a viable option.
“You would appreciate, in the current [economic] environment, that may not have been the best use from a financial returns perspective. Therefore, we had a look at it and it will work as office accommodations. “So we have been knocking this around for well over a year in terms of outfitting it. We are at the point now where we can commence work once the contract is awarded,” said Layne.
The multi-storey car park was developed by the BTI with about 15 000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor of the building, which was opened late 2009. (MM)
