(Jamaica Observer) Managing Director of the ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007 Chris Dehring has expressed profound disappointment in the under-use of the Trelawny Multi-purpose Stadium five years after the facility was built to stage matches during the Caribbean’s hosting of the world’s premier cricketing tournament.
The stadium, at Florence Hall in Trelawny, was built specifically for the World Cup and staged the opening ceremony as well as several warm-up games in group D which Jamaica hosted.
Huge plans for the facility have been discussed and bandied about by successive Governments, including a proposed baseball diamond for spring training for North American teams as well as basketball facilities.
Those plans have, however, not come to fruition.
When Jamaica hosted games in the CONCACAF Under-17 World Cup qualifying final they were staged at the venue and the facility has been used to stage the Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival in recent years.
Dehring told the Jamaica Observer that while it was a major surprise that the controversial stadium — built at a cost of J$9 billion with a loan from the Chinese government — was constructed at all, it is what has since become of it that has been the bigger letdown.
“It’s very disappointing to see what has happened to that stadium,” said Dehring.
“It was a surprise to us at the World Cup when the Government decided to go ahead with the building, but it made sense from a national perspective if we were going to use it to develop a whole tourism plan around it,” he added.
In 2010, the then ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) administration granted use of the facility to the University of Technology (UTech) for various sports programmes after promising it lands adjacent to the ground at Hague to develop its western campus.
UTech had planned to turn the entire facility into its western campus — turning boxes into classrooms.
Then Minister of Sport, Olivia Grange, said that the university’s plan would have been counter-productive and said that the nearby Hague ground would be more suited to the tertiary institutions plans.
Dehring said that so much could be done with the stadium which is situtaed close to the tourist resort areas of Falmouth, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay.
“It’s ideally placed for that on the north coast,” said Dehring. “It needs to be refined to be resigned to be a true multi-purpose stadium. At the moment it’s only multi-purpose in name.”
Former president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association (JHTA), Wayne Cummings, has uttered a similar sentiment.
While a guest of the Jamaica Observer during the weekly Monday Exchange of reporters and editors, Cummings called the facility a “white elephant” and “the biggest waste of money”.
Dehring said the stadium would need to be upgraded to achieve its full potential.
“There’s no stadium in the world that is financially viable without lights. So unless we can get lights there (or Sabina) it should be very difficult to capitalise on assets like that,” Dehring declared.
