Tem­pers flared on Sat­ur­day on the grounds out­side of Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, with mem­bers of the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty and oth­er stake­hold­ers and San Fer­nan­do may­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo as works to de­vel­op a dri­ve-in cin­e­ma start­ed.

Stake­hold­ers said they were not con­sult­ed about the works to be done and ob­ject­ed to the con­struc­tion of the 15 by 15 feet screen at the site. The dri­ve-in cin­e­ma will be at the lo­ca­tion for three months and is ex­pect­ed to open on June 26. It will ac­com­mo­date 150 ve­hi­cles and will open on week­ends—Fri­days to Sun­day—from 6 pm to 8 pm.

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived, busi­ness­men were busy paint­ing the stands and in the process of putting up the screen.

Gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion Alexan­drine El­liott-Pro­cope ques­tioned who are the peo­ple that wel­comed the ini­tia­tive to in­tro­duce the dri­ve-in cin­e­ma. "Was it the peo­ple of Em­ba­cadere, be­cause they can­not go on the Gulf View grounds? I am not throw­ing stones at no­body, es­pe­cial­ly at the PNM. Why weren’t we in­formed? We de­cid­ed to take a stand now."

But Re­grel­lo hit back, "That is your agen­da. This is not po­lit­i­cal, this is about San Fer­nan­do. This is not a PNM thing. If al­lyuh want a con­ver­sa­tion I am for that. If al­lyuh want to fight I com­ing back with gloves for that. I am open to con­ver­sa­tion. I don’t have on no box­ing gloves but I am not afraid of none of al­lyuh. This is based on the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion and pol­i­cy.

He said Skin­ner Park was giv­en to the peo­ple for recre­ation, sports and en­ter­tain­ment. "It doesn’t be­long to me. There are peo­ple who re­quire en­ter­tain­ment as well. It doesn’t be­long to the sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Re­grel­lo said a month ago the coun­cil was ap­proached by a group of young en­tre­pre­neurs for an op­por­tu­ni­ty and in light of this un­prece­dent­ed time, where en­ter­tain­ment has dwin­dled or doesn’t ex­ist at all, they came up with this nov­el idea of hav­ing a dri­ve-in cin­e­ma. He said the pro­mot­ers got ap­provals from all the re­quired in­sti­tu­tions, in­clud­ing the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Fire Ser­vices.

Aaron Williams, part pro­mot­er of the Xpe­ri­ence brand, said the avail­abil­i­ty of the oth­er venues (Twi­light and Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um) are un­sure and a part­ner­ship was struck be­tween the City of San Fer­nan­do and the Xpe­ri­ence com­mit­tee.

Williams said, "To use this fa­cil­i­ty means as well pro­vid­ing enough space for the foot­ball en­thu­si­asts and the walk­ing and ex­er­cis­ing per­sons to use the fa­cil­i­ty. But we are look­ing at so­lu­tions to use this lo­ca­tion as it is a city space and we will be cre­at­ing em­ploy­ment as well as beau­ti­fy­ing the space."

El­liott-Pro­cope said be­tween ten to 15 youth clubs use the park for the de­vel­op­ment of the sport, with peo­ple from ages three to 20 years.

She said about 2,000 peo­ple use Skin­ner Park. The clubs are gear­ing up to re­turn to the park on the June 22.