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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Dogged by con­tro­ver­sy...

Tarouba stadium ready by February

by

20161227

Chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Noel Gar­cia said by Feb­ru­ary, next year the con­tro­ver­sial Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba would be ready for crick­et.

Com­ple­tion work on the con­tro­ver­sial venue restart­ed un­der the present gov­ern­ment af­ter the build­ing was left idle for sev­er­al years need­ing com­ple­tion be­fore it could be oc­cu­pied.

In 2005, a $275 mil­lion con­tract was award­ed for the con­struc­tion of the sta­di­um. How­ev­er, the cost bal­looned to $885 mil­lion with sev­er­al de­lays, which re­sult­ed in the project be­ing halt­ed in 2010.

The fa­cil­i­ty, named af­ter leg­endary West In­di­an crick­eter Bri­an Lara, was sup­posed to be fin­ished in time for the 2007 ICC Crick­et World Cup in the Caribbean.

In No­vem­ber 2015, dur­ing a tour f the fa­cil­i­ty, Sport Min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith said the sta­di­um would be ready by mid-2016.

In giv­ing a progress re­port on the sta­di­um, Gar­cia said by Jan­u­ary 31, work on the acad­e­my will be com­plet­ed and in Feb­ru­ary the pub­lic would be able to en­joy the first crick­et match at the venue.

"So far the project has been un­der bud­get. Ude­cott has spent to date un­der $73 mil­lion. But you nev­er know be­cause there is al­ways con­tin­gency. So let us put it this way. Up to now we are with­in bud­get and time. We are plan­ning to have an in­ter­na­tion­al 20/20 match in the mid­dle of Feb­ru­ary as an of­fi­cial open­ing," Gar­cia said.

He said one of the things the Gov­ern­ment must en­sure was that the sta­di­um be used for com­mer­cial use.

"We still have the oth­er ob­jec­tive with it be­ing a train­ing acad­e­my. How­ev­er, we can al­so keep an eye on the com­mer­cial as­pect of it."

Gar­cia said the sta­di­um would be an al­ter­na­tive to the Queen's Park Oval, in Port-of-Spain.

"It en­gen­ders what I call healthy com­pe­ti­tion." He said next Ju­ly, the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) wants to host a match at the venue.

Leav­ing the build­ing un­at­tend­ed for six years, Gar­cia said re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to its fix­tures and fur­ni­ture.

"Peo­ple van­dalised the place so all the elec­tri­cal ca­bles were stolen."

He said of the $90 mil­lion bud­get­ed to do re­fur­bish­ment works, the civ­il the build­ing works took the largest chunk.

"Just to re­place the elec­tri­cal ca­bles cost Ude­cott be­tween $6 to $9 mil­lion alone. This was the most ex­pen­sive part of the work to date."

In­stal­la­tion of 10,000 seats, which are sched­uled to ar­rive on Jan­u­ary 27, would be in­stalled by Feb­ru­ary 15, Gar­cia said.

"Oth­er ad­di­tion­al works to be com­plet­ed by Feb­ru­ary 15, in­clude the dig­i­tal score­board, which is be­ing sourced from out­side, the turn­stiles and the land­scap­ing of the en­trance to the sta­di­um," Gar­cia said.

Civ­il works, dec­o­ra­tive fenc­ing, struc­tur­al works, se­cu­ri­ty fenc­ing, handrails, guard booths, roof­ing re­pairs, up­grade of the play­ing field and in­stal­la­tion of new pitch­es have al­ready been com­plet­ed.

"The fol­low­ing pack­ages have been com­plet­ed but re­quire com­mis­sion­ing af­ter re-con­nec­tion of per­ma­nent pow­er to the sta­di­um by T&TEC, re­fur­bish­ments of the fire, potable, ir­ri­ga­tion and sew­er pumps, three stand­by gen­er­a­tors, the in­stal­la­tion of all speak­ers for au­dio me­dia, all air-con­di­tion­ing units and ac­cess con­trol and CCTV cam­eras."

With work com­ing to a close, Gar­cia said he al­ways felt that leav­ing the sta­di­um in­com­plete would have been a waste of $800 mil­lion of tax­pay­ers mon­ey, while the build­ing would have end­ed up as a scrap heap.

"So it was al­ways my and Ude­cott's in­ten­tion to fin­ish the project and put it in­to the use for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of T&T. I re­al­ly ques­tion peo­ple's pa­tri­o­tism when they could ad­vo­cate that you aban­don a project sim­ply be­cause of some­body they don't like. We re­al­ly have to stop this par­ti­san and third world ap­proach...that if the PNM start some­thing and the UNC come in­to pow­er they must stop it and vice ver­sa."

Gar­cia said at the end of the day, the play­ers on the field are not con­cerned if it is a UNC or PNM ball or bat. "What they are con­cerned, is that, the fa­cil­i­ty is up to world-class stan­dards."


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