New performing arts academy could need $80M for repairs: Report

It was opened recently with great fanfare but reports suggest that the new National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port of Spain has some serious flaws and the repairs could cost as much as $80 million.

The academy was a UDeCOTT project that was built by the Shanghai Construction Group, the same organization that's building a controversial church at the Heights of Guanapo in Arima Prime Minister Patrick Manning had praised the building as being world class.

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But a document by the Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT) disagrees. Its Interim President, Rubadiri Victor, believes that $80 million is "a realistic estimate of the costs that would be involved to correct the defects.”

Victor believes part of the problem is that the firm that designed and built the facility "may not have been experienced in building facilities of this kind.” The ACTT dossier circulating on the Internet points out several defects:

• There is no loading area for the main stage
• The stage is “ill-matched” to the 1,500 seating capacity of the hall
• The orchestra pit is defective
• The light and sound boards are analogue and not digital

It states that there are “hundreds of problems with lighting and sound fixtures and equipment”.

The stage floor is “ribbed and is not a sprung floor so is ill-suited for dancing and thus will damage dancers”.

In addition it states that dance studios are flawed and that there are no costume rooms, no set construction rooms and no warehousing rooms.

It quotes one independent architect as saying that the laminated floors have begun to chip already, adding that there are creases on the stage, "which will be a challenge for dancer."