A false start or a new restart—government returns to car park development talks as NAMCO board set to meet within ‘two weeks’

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The Board at the National Asset Management Company (NAMCO) is expected to meet within the next two weeks, as the Cabinet hopes to move forward with the completion of the 15-year-old car park.

The car park project, once called the Sunshine Hub project, has been a political issue between both major political parties, with the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party using the derelict construction site to criticize their opponents’ handling of public infrastructure.

The project which originally began in 2005 under the United Progressive Party stalled in 2010 due to funding issues after the collapse of its chief financier, CLICO.

NAMCO purchased the building in 2017 for US$6 million, and the government had promised every year since then that it was planning to begin work on the facility to ease traffic congestion in the heart of St John’s—a promise yet to be fulfilled.

With some of the delays attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020 and the need to reallocate resources, in 2022, Information Minister Melford Nicholas said that the building received a technical reassessment.

At the time, Minister Nicholas explained that that assessment had been completed, meaning the next step was to choose an entity to do the necessary refurbishment and execute the rest of the construction.

However, work continued to be delayed, and last year, the government announced that the upper floor of the building was slated to become a modern studio for State media Antigua Barbuda Broadcasting Services (ABS), while the ground floor was to be leased to private firms.

The Chief of Staff in the Office of the Prime Minister, Lionel Hurst, acknowledged the delays in completing the project, which, he says, has become too costly for the government to tear down.

“We [still] think it was a mistake from the very onset, but we have learned that the cost of dismantling it will be greater than the cost of building it, and so we’re going to try to make the best of it,” he said.

He added that three elevators must be installed, and a rewiring of the entire building needs to be undertaken.

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