​To­day, I re­flect on a col­umn pub­lished some ten years ago (Ju­ly 6, 2015) that ap­pealed for the up­grad­ing of Gilbert Park, Cal­i­for­nia, in­to a mul­ti-pur­pose fa­cil­i­ty to serve both sport and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. As I pass by the fa­cil­i­ty every day, I share the very same thoughts as of 10 years ago.

The time is ap­pro­pri­ate for re­vamp­ing and re-imag­ing Gilbert Park, Cal­i­for­nia in­to a dy­nam­ic mod­ern sport­ing and mul­ti-pur­pose venue. Such a project will not on­ly of­fer sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties for ath­letes but will al­so pro­vide a means by which it can be op­er­at­ed as a busi­ness to sus­tain it­self and not he­m­or­rhage the state trea­sury.

Rich His­to­ry

Gilbert Park was the venue of many en­thralling bat­tles be­tween Wan­der­ers and Preysal Sports. It al­so host­ed nu­mer­ous na­tion­al crick­et tri­al match­es, which drew large crowds, giv­en its strate­gic po­si­tion nes­tled among sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties.

​When­ev­er Bri­an Lara graced the ground for tri­al match­es it was not un­com­mon to see large crowds buzzing with high ex­pec­ta­tions to see the mas­ter class bats­man. Gilbert Park was the home of sev­er­al na­tion­al play­ers such as De­onar­ine Deyal, Nar­ine Bideshi, Balka­ran Sagram, Richard Sieuchan, and Avidesh Sama­roo.

Like crick­et, foot­ball match­es drew large crowds as per­sons turned out to see Ca­roni FC match skills with sev­er­al clubs from the Cen­tral Zone such as Leeds Utd and oth­er top clubs in the coun­try such as De­fence Force, Po­lice, Barataria Ball Play­ers, Maple, ASL and Mem­phis to name a few.

The ground has al­so been used by Cen­tral Ath­let­ics who have pro­duced sev­er­al out­stand­ing na­tion­al run­ners at var­i­ous dis­tances. Vin­cent­ian Pa­menos Bal­lan­tyne reg­u­lar­ly trained at the ground dur­ing his pe­ri­od of dom­i­nance of dis­tance run­ning in T&T.

Cen­tre of Com­mu­ni­ties

In ad­di­tion to the rich sport­ing his­to­ry of the park, its cen­tral lo­ca­tion to the com­mu­ni­ties of Cou­va and en­vi­rons and the easy ac­cess routes for trav­el and trans­porta­tion will make the venue at­trac­tive to spec­ta­tors. Fur­ther­more, the ad­ja­cent At­lantic Plaza and the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate makes the area a hub of ac­tiv­i­ty.

Gilbert Park is rough­ly 15-20 min­utes away from the lo­ca­tion of the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um, the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre, the Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre and the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome. It is al­so ten min­utes away from the Sevil­la golf course.

Rev­enue Gen­er­at­ing Up­grades

Flood­lights will fa­cil­i­tate T20 crick­et and at­tract large crowds. The venue can al­so be used as a train­ing venue and host­ing the busi­ness end of age group, schools and women crick­et tour­na­ments.

The up­grade of Gilbert Park should emerge from a na­tion­al plan for fa­cil­i­ties com­ple­ment­ing the sport de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme. A busi­ness mod­el ap­proach should dri­ve the up­grade project en­sur­ing that it can be self-sus­tain­able and re­duc­ing its de­pen­den­cy on the state trea­sury.

There­fore, in ad­di­tion to sport, the fa­cil­i­ty should of­fer con­fer­ence and sem­i­nar rooms and an au­di­to­ri­um for wed­dings, grad­u­a­tions and oth­er func­tions as rev­enue gen­er­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.