So­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano is­sued a three-page apol­o­gy to his fans this week­end af­ter his high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed One Show con­cert held on Car­ni­val Fri­day at the Hase­ly Craw­ford sta­di­um failed to hit the mark be­cause of lo­gis­ti­cal and oth­er is­sues.

On be­half of JayUp­Scale, Monk Mu­sic and Machel Mon­tano, col­lab­o­ra­tors of One Show at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, we would like to sin­cere­ly apol­o­gise for the late start and the chal­lenges to get through the gates on Car­ni­val Fri­day! We know that you ex­pect the high­est stan­dards from us, and this fell short of what we have been do­ing over the years.

There are many chal­lenges prepar­ing a sta­di­um that was de­signed for sport to be ready to host con­certs of this mag­ni­tude. From the out­set, the safe­ty of our pa­trons is al­ways our first pri­or­i­ty! The sta­di­um is the on­ly venue that can ac­com­mo­date these num­bers, and we are grate­ful to SportTT for this ac­com­mo­da­tion in light of them work­ing on its re­fur­bish­ing.

The sta­di­um con­trac­tors, the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty and all of the show ser­vice providers tried to de­liv­er our best while be­ing very cog­nizant of pro­tect­ing the prop­er­ty and pa­trons, but did not de­liv­er on time de­spite our great­est ef­forts.

We did not have the build-out time that we nor­mal­ly would have had due to a track event sev­en days be­fore, as a re­sult, at open­ing time there was a lot of heavy equip­ment around the perime­ter and some more work re­mained to com­plete the in­side floor. 

For this rea­son, the fire ser­vices did not al­low us to open at our ad­ver­tised time but we are grate­ful for their co­op­er­a­tion and guid­ance, which en­abled us to pro­vide an in­ci­dent free ex­pe­ri­ence. 

We are on our mis­sion to present so­ca to the globe and in­tro­duce artists to our cul­ture and unique Car­ni­val! Thank you to every­one from all over the world who came out and filled this sta­di­um! We are grate­ful and hum­bled by the sup­port from every­one who at­tend­ed, as well as the artists and per­form­ers who came to­geth­er for this show­case on car­ni­val week­end! Over 30 artists from the Caribbean and Africa touched this stage!

The show start­ed at 10 pm, an hour late, which in­ad­ver­tent­ly caused pro­gram re­arrange­ments and de­lays in change overs. Thank you to every­one who ad­just­ed their sched­ules to en­sure the de­liv­ery of all of the artists as ad­ver­tised. 

Thank you to the po­lice ser­vice and fire de­part­ment for keep­ing us safe and sup­port­ing our vi­sion, and all who al­lowed us to take the show to 5am, giv­ing Machel the op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­form for 3 hours and 45 mins. We al­so thank our cor­po­rate part­ners, ser­vice providers and every­one who joined us to put on the event.  

Cul­ture needs its own venue of this size and as a na­tion we must un­der­stand this is our great­est nat­ur­al re­source. No­body in the world can cre­ate sto­ries this rich, pro­duce mu­sic this sweet and gath­er in har­mo­ny like this.

While the apol­o­gy was 454 words long it was these two phras­es to­talling 32 words that caught my at­ten­tion.

“The sta­di­um is the on­ly venue that can ac­com­mo­date these num­bers...”

“Cul­ture needs its own venue of this size and as a na­tion we must un­der­stand this is our great­est nat­ur­al re­source.”

It is an is­sue that for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had hoped to ad­dress.

Man­ning had a vi­sion for T&T, apt­ly known as Vi­sion 2020.

And one of the things in that vi­sion was the es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Car­ni­val En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre (NCEC) at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

The idea is men­tioned in the Vi­sion 2020 Op­er­a­tional Plan 2007-2010 Re­port which can still be found on the Fi­nance Min­istry’s web­site.

Among the tar­gets for 2010 was the es­tab­lish­ment of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre.

“T&T is en­dowed with a rich cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty and is com­mit­ted to nur­tur­ing lo­cal cre­ative in­dus­tries. The em­pha­sis at this time is on the es­tab­lish­ment of new cen­tres for cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion, and the up­grade of cul­tur­al and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties,” it stat­ed.

Among the projects was the re­fur­bish­ment of Queen’s Hall, the ren­o­va­tion of Na­pari­ma Bowl, the con­struc­tion of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), and an up­grade of the Lit­tle Carib The­atre.

“Work is cur­rent­ly be­ing un­der­tak­en on the es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al Car­ni­val En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. It is ex­pect­ed that the fa­cil­i­ty will be com­plet­ed in time for Car­ni­val 2009,” it stat­ed.

More than a decade lat­er and that cen­tre is not even a mem­o­ry for most.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Ltd (Ude­cott) web­site with re­spect to “Work on Na­tion­al Car­ni­val and En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre in Progress” dat­ed Ju­ly 7, 2006.

“Con­trary to re­ports in the me­dia on Ju­ly 7, 2006, works are in progress for the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val and En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre planned for the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. Ude­cott is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in re­view­ing de­tailed en­gi­neer­ing draw­ings and val­ue en­gi­neer­ing the project. Giv­en the scope of this project, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly pru­dent that these de­tailed process­es be com­plet­ed pri­or to en­gag­ing in con­struc­tion to avoid any fore­see­able cost ex­cess in the project.

“Once these steps are com­plete, fur­ther Cab­i­net ap­proval for the project will be sought for the com­mence­ment of phys­i­cal con­struc­tion. A de­f­i­n­i­tion of val­ue en­gi­neer­ing: val­ue en­gi­neer­ing is a sys­tem­at­ic method to im­prove the “Val­ue” of goods and ser­vices by us­ing an ex­am­i­na­tion of func­tion. Val­ue, as de­fined, is the ra­tio of func­tion to cost. Val­ue can there­fore be in­creased by ei­ther im­prov­ing the func­tion or re­duc­ing the cost. It is a pri­ma­ry tenet of val­ue en­gi­neer­ing that qual­i­ty not be re­duced as a con­se­quence of pur­su­ing Val­ue im­prove­ments.”

The NCEC was said to be a “state-of-the-art, lo­cal­ly de­signed cul­tur­al cen­tre, which will be the set­ting for the vast ar­ray of cel­e­bra­tions that are the high­lights of our di­verse na­tion­al cul­tur­al cal­en­dar.”

“As the na­tion’s cul­tur­al show­piece, the NCEC will make its home against the ma­jes­tic back­drop of the North­ern Range and be lo­cat­ed a mere stone’s throw from the planned Port-of-Spain Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts,” it stat­ed.

“The NCEC will seam­less­ly melt in­to the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, since it will pre­serve the cur­rent recre­ation­al use of the area whilst si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly cater­ing to the needs of the mod­ern and fu­ture users of the fa­cil­i­ty.

“In or­der to en­sure that the re­quire­ments of stake­hold­ers are ac­com­mo­dat­ed in the de­sign, dis­cus­sions were held with var­i­ous groups in­volved in the per­form­ing arts and oth­er cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties, re­sult­ing in an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive de­sign ap­proach,” Ude­cott stat­ed.

Some of the ben­e­fits of the NCEC were said to in­clude seat­ing for 15,000 to 18,000, artistes’ suites and work­shops, dress­ing rooms for per­form­ers, VIP and me­dia ac­com­mo­da­tion, and state-of-the-art acoustic ac­com­mo­da­tions de­signed for the en­hance­ment of mu­si­cal and the­atri­cal per­for­mances.