Vin­ode Mam­chan

While there has been a lot of noise about the loss of green space at the Ed­die Hart Grounds and Gold­en Grove Sa­van­nah, I won­der if the res­i­dents are think­ing about the young ones, or just be­ing emo­tion­al and fear­ing change which is so feared in T&T.George Bernard Shaw once said that: "Progress is im­pos­si­ble with­out change, and those who can­not change their minds can­not change any­thing." I am get­ting the feel­ing that this is the prob­lem in the East.The de­vel­op­ment of the area known as the Ed­die Hart Grounds and Gold­en Grove Sa­van­nah in­to a re­gion­al sport­ing cen­tre/ground is one that has been in the mak­ing for the past 10 years but on­ly now com­ing to fruition.So hav­ing heard all the noise about what should and should not be done to the ar­eas in ques­tion, I de­cid­ed to walk across to the SPORTT com­pa­ny on Hen­ry Street to get an un­der­stand­ing of what is planned.

When I left, I was con­vert­ed and I am sor­ry, if the peo­ple of the area who are op­posed to this de­vel­op­ment are aware of what is planned, then they can on­ly be 'back­ward thinkers'.

Let me ad­dress some of the con­cerns that have sur­faced. One of the ma­jor one is that peo­ple are say­ing that the sa­van­nah rep­re­sents a spe­cial space for fam­i­ly and most fam­i­lies in the com­mu­ni­ty be­cause it has served to hold the com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er.I was told that all of the ar­eas on the West­ern end of the fa­cil­i­ty in­clud­ing the play park, recre­ation/pic­nic area, jog­ging track and Crick­et Field will not be fenced and will there­fore en­cour­age com­mu­ni­ty use as cur­rent­ly ob­tains.The on­ly pro­posed fenced ar­eas will be the foot­ball field and its sur­round­ing ath­let­ic train­ing track as well as the in­door fa­cil­i­ty.These are the on­ly ar­eas that will re­quire some lev­el of for­mal sched­ul­ing for struc­tured sport­ing events, but as part of the dai­ly op­er­a­tion, cit­i­zens will be free to ac­cess and use these ameni­ties at any time.Fol­low­ing re­cent con­sul­ta­tions there were con­cerns raised by in­ter­est groups and cur­rent users of the sa­van­nah/grounds about the de­struc­tion of green space to erect con­crete struc­tures. How­ev­er, al­most 85 per­cent of to­tal area un­der de­vel­op­ment will be grassed, I am told.

In or­der to ad­dress oth­er key ar­eas of con­cern, the fol­low­ing ad­just­ments have been pro­posed by SPORTT.These ad­just­ments in­clude, phas­ing of con­struc­tion to min­imise in­ter­rup­tion to on­go­ing sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, in­creased width and length of jog­ging/run­ning track to ac­com­mo­date the large vol­ume of ca­su­al ath­letes, use of eco-friend­ly, per­me­able ma­te­ri­als for the car park for drainage pur­pos­es and preser­va­tion of wa­ter sources in the con­struc­tion phase and the con­ser­va­tion of en­er­gy in the fa­cil­i­ty's op­er­a­tion.Due to the small ra­tio of the pro­posed paved ar­eas to the over­all area, the im­pact of these works on aquifer recharge was con­sid­ered neg­li­gi­ble and all WASA sta­tions have been main­tained in the pro­posed de­sign.The in­ves­ti­ga­tion of a soft­er paved sur­face as men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous point will al­so re­move this con­cern as per­co­la­tion will be al­lowed through this sur­face.The Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T is man­dat­ed to de­vel­op this sport­ing hub to ac­com­mo­date mul­ti-pur­pose sport­ing sur­faces and ameni­ties. The pur­pose of this re­gion­al cen­tre is to make qual­i­ty sur­faces more eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to na­tion­als want­i­ng to par­tic­i­pate in for­mal/in­for­mal sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, up and com­ing ath­letes through com­mu­ni­ty clubs and groups, while re­tain­ing green spaces for ca­su­al recre­ation­al users, in a safe en­vi­ron­ment.

The pro­posed fa­cil­i­ties that is sure to ben­e­fit every­one are as fol­lows: An in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard foot­ball field on the east ground with sta­di­um light­ing. An ath­let­ics track on the east ground with light­ing. A 900-seat cov­ered pavil­ion, with ded­i­cat­ed chang­ing fa­cil­i­ties for play­ers, pub­lic toi­lets and con­ces­sion­aire spaces.An in­door sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty build­ing that will con­tain: a 25m swim­ming pool, an open gym­na­si­um area, an aer­o­bics and spin class area, a box­ing and mar­tial arts area, a mul­ti-pur­pose court, a squash area, ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices, a change room, show­er and toi­let fa­cil­i­ties.An in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard crick­et field on the west ground with sta­di­um light­ing. A ded­i­cat­ed jog­ging path on the east ground with light­ing. Two (2) small goal foot­ball courts with light­ing and a chil­dren's play park with equip­ment.As a sports jour­nal­ist, I have en­coun­tered many sport­ing of­fi­cials and ath­letes and time and time again they talk about lack of fa­cil­i­ties.

They make one trip out­side this coun­try and come back and crit­i­cise in their words 'our back­ward­ness'.Here is a sit­u­a­tion where SPORTT in tak­ing the ath­letes in­to the first world and yet we rather op­pose and just hin­der nec­es­sary progress.Let's hope that good sense pre­vails and sport in this coun­try can con­tin­ue to move up­ward.