by Marlon Madden
One of this island’s prominent real estate investment specialists is proposing a modern, ten-storey residential building in Bridgetown to help breathe life into the now dreary capital. Chief Operating Officer of Terra Caribbean Hayden Hutton said such a building may suit The City, with the ground floor and first floor being allocated for commercial businesses and the rest for residences.
At the same time, he suggested that concessions could be put in place to entice residents to live there.
“My location for this 10-storey building is somewhere by Carlisle House and Marshall Hall to have a site somewhere on the parameter of the city centre we are going to build an eco- modern building, sustainable, photovoltaic and maybe even off the grid, security, smartphone access, smart parking.
“Ground floor of this building could be coffee shop, I-Mart, restaurant, other convenience retail. The first floor on this building could be a gym, day care, co-working space, all open to the public . . . and then eight floors of residential. But the key here is for long-term rental,”
said Hutton.
“I am not asking you to commit permanently to the city centre yet, I am starting with rental. That is a bit of a change in paradigm because we do not have rental buildings . . . in Barbados what tends to happen is that we have developers who unwittingly become landlords because they build too many condos, can’t get them sold and so they end up putting them for rent for the long-term,” he said.
He said his proposed clean living space would go for “a reasonable rent”. However, he said perhaps there should be some form of incentive to get people to live there. “Perhaps you need to relook the concessions and ensure they are disruptive enough to actually make it happen,” said Hutton, who said concessions tended to be based on “the supply side. “[It is about] what the developer the funder and all the team doing the development need, and we do not focus on the demand side.
The demand side is actually most important. If I told [someone] he could rent a unit in this building and he would get a full tax credit for the rent he pays he would be tripping over himself to get into this building. The key is, it would have to be targeted at the right audience,”
said Hutton.
He said a little informal survey he did showed that a number of young people would buy into such an idea once several issues such as crime and security, traffic congestion and parking, cleanliness and beautification, the lack of adequate walking and bike-friendly spaces, amenities and attraction were addressed.
Hutton was speaking during a recent Barbados Town Planning Society’s Revitalising Bridgetown online series, which was held under the theme Can Housing Development Help Revitalise Bridgetown?
Saying he was aware that there were several projects planned for The City including the Hyatt Ziva, the Careenage development, Constitution River and Freedom Park, Hutton said “it could well be that the momentum is building and perhaps the passion for Bridgetown will fuel that development”.
“I think for the city centre though, we just need to lay the first brick,” he said, as he urged Barbadians to commit to going into Bridgetown and walk around and make a purchase. The real estate practitioner expressed concern about the number of buildings in the capital that were either up for rent or sale.
Hutton said the partially and complete vacant commercial buildings could mean that the owners were now unable to meet some of their obligations since they were getting very little or no income.
“So then the question is how are you going to keep the building looking good, how are you going to maintain it?” he said, adding “the cycle repeats and the buildings decline over time so then values decline”.
“What has been happening in Bridgetown over the last many years is that you have revenue vacancy in the form of discounts . . .,” he said. “On this trajectory an investment in a building in the city centre is just no longer an attractive proposition. It just isn’t,” said Hutton.
He said research has shown that most people prefer to rent a ground floor of a building in Bridgetown with the number getting lower as you go up.
“So many of those buildings in Bridgetown, on the top floor, you will find being vacant or it is being used for storage and is being rented very cheaply,” he said.
He said this situation would suit his scenario of a ten-storey building in The City, where the ground floor and the first floor could be used for commercial purposes and the others are used for residences.
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb
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