The Georgetown Amateur Basketball Association (GABA) has taken one step closer to realizing the Burnham Basketball Court enhancement project with its President Trevor Rose disclosing yesterday that they have secured the necessary funds.
According to Rose, they have received in excess of $7M from sponsors who wish to be unnamed until the official launching and turning of the sod.
Upon taking office last year, Rose and his executives turned to the outdoor facility as their home for the sport but the deterioration of the venue, coupled with a cracked backboard, forced them indoors to the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
However, they had complained about the high rent of that facility and began taking a proactive approach to corporate Guyana for assistance to enhance the Burnham Court.
“I honestly don’t want to say much about it at the moment, just that we have gotten the funding needed to do the work. So, right now we have to get some more quotations from some contractors to see which one fits our budget and also to get a new architectural drawing,” Rose said.
On January 19 Stabroek Sport published an artist’s impression of what the facility would look like after it is enhanced but Rose disclosed that he was in possession of the drawing even before he became GABA’s president last year and now based on some new developments, it has to be revised.
He said that the GABA would want to make revenue from the facility for its upkeep but they are awaiting word from the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) on the possibility of fencing the surroundings.
“We want to place some of the sponsors’ billboards and so on around the place just to get something coming in, but also we want to fence the place where we would charge an entrance fee for games. This would help GABA to upkeep the place because let’s say a light or something goes wrong, we want to be able to replace it ourselves. Not everything we would want to run to sponsors for. But we have to wait on the Council to give us the OK because it’s a public facility even though they handed it over to us, people should still have access to it, but like I said, we’re waiting to speak with them,” said Rose.
A fashion designer by profession, Rose when asked about the deadline for completion said, “actually, it’s hard to do that right now because it’s a lot of work, but I would say that it would go on over a period of time, but more would be said at the big conference coming up, I don’t want to spill everything out right now.”
Meanwhile, looking ahead, the GABA is planning a massive Super Eight Inter-Ward basketball tournament which they are calling the ‘Twenty20 of basketball’.