January 2017 | Business View Caribbean

40 41 CONSULTING CIVIL / STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTISTS, PLANNERS, PROJECT MANAGERS, VALUATORS P.O. Box 1758, Kingstown, St. Vincent & The Grenadines Phone: 784-457-2644 n 784-492-0888 stewarteng87@gmail.com www.stewartengineeringsvg.com • Technical and Economic Feasibility Studies • Hotel and Subdivision Developments • Residential Homes & Luxury Villa Designs • Condominium Developments • Commercial Buildings • Coastal and Marina Facilities • Roads and Bridges • Contract Administration & Tender Appraisals • Project Management & Construction Supervision National Properties Limited shareholder, like the Massy, three-store supermarket chain. By the efforts of National Properties, the old government Marketing Board property and oper- ation in Kingstown, the capital, that was vested to it by the government, evolved into a Save-A-Lot supermarket joint venture with Consolidated Foods Ltd. of St. Lucia in 2011, then to a Super J 3-store chain when Consolidated Foods merged with Aunt Jobe Supermarkets, and now to a 3-store Massy (of Trinidad and Tobago) supermarket chain. The evolution of the failed government Lauders Value-Added facility is also of interest. This project, established to supply fresh, peeled, packaged, frozen root crops, vegetables, and fruits to the market, simply foundered, then was vested in National Properties. In time,National Properties forged a joint venture called VincyFresh to develop this operation withWinfresh, the successor company toWIBDECO that marketed bananas in its heyday. Seek- ing major diversification and still possessing substantial international outreach, Winfresh expressed its interest in developing VincyFresh on its own, and Nation- al Properties divested both its shares as well as a factory facility it had built in Diamond for an upgraded food-processing oper- ation. Other public assets vested in National Proper- ties include what was once a sugar warehouse, built in 1814, in Kingstown. Considerable re- furbishment work was done on this building to convert it to a hotel, and it has been operating quite successfully for many years now, under a leasehold arrangement, as the Cobblestone Inn. Another property at Canash, previously the home to operations by Caribbean Sailing Yachts and Sunsail,was sold by National Properties and has been beautifully developed into the Blue Lagoon Hotel and Marina. The major hotel outfit, the Buccament Bay Resorts, was established on lands sold by National Properties. This hotel The company has some 15 employees attached to its main office in Diamond on the main island of St. Vincent, but its direct employment involvement accounts for hundreds of em- ployees through businesses it owns solely,