Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

A bronze stat­ue of Bri­an Lara will be erect­ed along the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain, to ho­n­our the crick­eter, lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning says. She said the stat­ue would be among a pletho­ra of ini­tia­tives to re­store and ren­o­vate the Prom­e­nade. "Lat­er in the year, a bronze stat­ue of the cel­e­brat­ed crick­eter Bri­an Lara will be in­stalled at the west­ern end of the prom­e­nade," Man­ning said. She was de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress yes­ter­day, dur­ing the un­veil­ing of an art ex­hi­bi­tion of block two of the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, op­po­site the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion. Lara holds the record for the high­est in­di­vid­ual score in a Test in­nings, af­ter scor­ing 400 not out against Eng­land in An­tigua in 2004. He topped the Test bat­ting rank­ings on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, and held sev­er­al crick­et­ing records. Among these was the high­est in­di­vid­ual score in first class crick­et of 501 not out for War­wick­shire against Durham at Edg­bas­ton, Eng­land, in 1994, which is the on­ly quin­tu­ple hun­dred in first class crick­et his­to­ry.

Ac­cord­ing to Man­ning, the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade had "a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry," and was a "vi­sion­ary prod­uct of Port-of-Spain that could con­tribute to mak­ing the cap­i­tal city the cap­i­tal of the Caribbean." She sug­gest­ed that the ren­o­va­tion project for the prom­e­nade in­clude more wa­ter-ori­ent­ed fa­cil­i­ties, such as foun­tains and an aquar­i­um. She made a call for a food court on the prom­e­nade to be con­sid­ered among its de­vel­op­men­tal plans. She al­so rec­om­mend­ed that sou­venir shops be put up on the Prom­e­nade. Man­ning not­ed that themes re­lat­ed to crick­et should be used for each prom­e­nade block. She al­so ap­pealed for the his­to­ry of Port-of-Spain to be in­clud­ed among the pro­pos­als for the prom­e­nade's up­grade. Man­ning said more fo­cus could be placed on the flo­ra, and that the prom­e­nade was "very un­sight­ly and un­be­com­ing for a promi­nent space in the city of Port-of-Spain" about 20 years ago. Man­ning said the de­ci­sion to con­struct the prom­e­nade was tak­en "amid much con­tention, much con­fu­sion and dis­af­fec­tion by some stake­hold­ers."

She stressed that the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade pos­sessed the "full po­ten­tial to be­come a pre­ferred site to vis­i­tors and a pre­ferred site to vis­it and recre­ate not on­ly in Port-of-Spain, but in the en­tire coun­try." Es­ti­mates from the Prom­e­nade Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion re­port­ed that more than 125,000 per­sons crossed the prom­e­nade each day, and that there were about 3,000 per­sons us­ing its fa­cil­i­ties on an av­er­age Fri­day af­ter­noon. Man­ning said the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade ren­o­va­tion and re­pair project would "fur­ther en­hance its pop­u­lar­i­ty and its use." She added that hun­dreds of vis­i­tors and cit­i­zens tra­vers­ing the prom­e­nade on a dai­ly ba­sis would make it one of the most pop­u­lar spaces in the city of Port-of-Spain. The prom­e­nade's over­all up­grade and ren­o­va­tion project was an ur­ban park ini­tia­tive, which was a func­tion of the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny, the Prom­e­nade Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion and Geni­var Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd.