Sto­ry and pho­tos

by Rishi Ra­goonath

The wait is over—it’s time to bowl! Pres­tige Lanes of­fi­cial­ly opened its doors at the C3 Cen­tre last Fri­day, bring­ing a world-class bowl­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to south Trinidad.

At the launch event, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pres­tige Lanes, Wen­dell Rat­tan, ex­pressed his en­thu­si­asm and re­lief at fi­nal­ly wel­com­ing the pub­lic.

“Thank you, every­one, for be­ing here with us to­day. Fi­nal­ly, we can an­swer the most pop­u­lar ques­tion that has been asked in San Fer­nan­do for the past 18 months: ‘When is Pres­tige Lanes go­ing to open in C3?’ And the an­swer is—to­day,” he de­clared, draw­ing ap­plause from the crowd.

Re­flect­ing on the jour­ney, Rat­tan ac­knowl­edged the hur­dles along the way.

“It has been long and filled with many ob­sta­cles, but on­ly through your sup­port have we been able to rise to the chal­lenge and of­fer this amaz­ing es­tab­lish­ment to south Trinidad,” he said.

Speak­ing pas­sion­ate­ly about the vi­sion be­hind Pres­tige Lanes, he ex­plained why bowl­ing and a fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre had al­ways been his goal.

“I have of­ten been asked, ‘Why bowl­ing? Why a fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre?’ And the an­swer is very sim­ple. I’ve been an­swer­ing it in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly for quite some time. But over the past three weeks, as we in­vit­ed fam­i­ly, friends, and some mem­bers of the pub­lic to ex­pe­ri­ence the fa­cil­i­ty, what I’d been ex­plain­ing in words be­came a re­al, per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence for me.”

He shared touch­ing ob­ser­va­tions from those pre­view ses­sions.

“I saw fa­thers pat­ting their sons on the back. I saw moth­ers laugh­ing with their daugh­ters. I saw grand­chil­dren danc­ing af­ter knock­ing down a sin­gle pin. These mo­ments are not things we should take for grant­ed, es­pe­cial­ly in a time when it’s wide­ly be­lieved that men­tal health may be the next glob­al pan­dem­ic. Those mo­ments are tru­ly mem­o­rable. They’re the kinds of ex­pe­ri­ences that will help shape a bet­ter fu­ture—not just for us here in Trinidad, but glob­al­ly.”

Join­ing the cel­e­bra­tion was Christo­pher Mack, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of JT Al­lum, own­ers of the C3 Cen­tre, who wel­comed Pres­tige Lanes to the mall’s en­ter­tain­ment of­fer­ings.

“It is a great plea­sure to wel­come Pres­tige Lanes to the C3 Cen­tre fam­i­ly,” Mack said. “Wen­dell’s com­mit­ment to cre­at­ing a world-class en­ter­tain­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, built on qual­i­ty, in­no­va­tion, and fam­i­ly-friend­ly fun, aligns per­fect­ly with the vi­sion we have al­ways had for C3.”

With its mod­ern lanes, live­ly at­mos­phere, and a clear fo­cus on bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er, Pres­tige Lanes looks set to be­come south Trinidad’s newest hotspot for leisure and con­nec­tion.