Gail Alexan­der and

An­drea Perez-Sobers

George Aboud, who died on Sun­day night at the age of 77 af­ter a pe­ri­od of ill­ness, was yes­ter­day de­scribed as a pi­o­neer and gi­ant of T&T’s busi­ness land­scape, leav­ing be­hind a re­tail and prop­er­ty em­pire built over decades.

Aboud’s name be­came syn­ony­mous with com­merce in Port-of-Spain and be­yond, start­ing in the fab­ric trade and ex­pand­ing in­to malls, phar­ma­cies and large-scale re­al es­tate.

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud, a rel­a­tive, said, “He was a pi­o­neer­ing busi­ness­man in many sens­es. He came from a long line of self-made men in the Aboud fam­i­ly who forged their way ahead, with lit­tle for­mal ed­u­ca­tion and with very hum­ble be­gin­nings, to be­come quite sig­nif­i­cant on the busi­ness land­scape, in par­tic­u­lar in the cap­i­tal of Port of Spain.”

The DO­MA pres­i­dent added, “In the city’s ear­ly days and its hey­day, George Aboud was the founder of a very pro­lif­ic fab­ric busi­ness, Abou­tique, and he trans­formed that in­to many oth­er busi­ness­es which in­clud­ed the Abou­tique Mall, a land­mark in the cap­i­tal, Star­lite Drugs and then his very pro­lif­ic in­volve­ment in re­al es­tate de­vel­op­ment, in which he had a keen eye for fu­ture po­ten­tial in prop­er­ty ac­qui­si­tion and prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ment.”

Born to Syr­i­an im­mi­grants, Charles and Sana Aboud, who came to Trinidad in the 1930s, Aboud was the el­dest of the fam­i­ly.

He is pre­de­ceased by his broth­ers An­tho­ny and Patrick and is sur­vived by his sis­ter Nor­ma, two sons, and two daugh­ters.

He be­gan in busi­ness on Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain, work­ing in his par­ents’ fab­ric shop, which grew in­to the Abou­tique brand, a leader in the lo­cal tex­tile trade.

His busi­ness­es were hit by ma­jor set­backs, in­clud­ing fires in the 1970s and loss­es dur­ing the 1990 coup at­tempt. Each time he re­built, lat­er ex­pand­ing in­to George Aboud and Sons Ltd, spear­head­ing land and prop­er­ty de­vel­op­ments across the coun­try.

Aboud went on to de­vel­op a net­work of com­mer­cial cen­tres, in­clud­ing Star­lite Shop­ping Plaza in Diego Mar­tin, Cen­tre City in Ch­agua­nas, Trop­i­cal Plaza in Mara­bel­la, and, most re­cent­ly, East Gates Mall in Trinci­ty, which opened in 2022 as the re­al­i­sa­tion of a long-held am­bi­tion.

A work­er who spoke with Guardian Me­dia said, “He was a bril­liant man. A big loss to Trinidad, a big loss to the busi­ness world. I can say that he was a very kind and tough cook­ie, but a fair guy. As an em­ploy­ee, I know his stan­dards. He kept very high stan­dards and ex­pect­ed every­thing around him to be done prop­er­ly. From my ex­pe­ri­ence, he was very fair and very just, very hard­work­ing. He was very kind to chil­dren, very kind to an­i­mals. He loved his com­mu­ni­ty and loved his fam­i­ly.”

The fu­ner­al ser­vice for George Aboud will be held on Fri­day, May 1, at the Church of the As­sump­tion, Mar­aval, at 10:30 am.