Images of the City: Tarouba Stadium

“With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be. ... But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream.” ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

It is a known fact that the majority of our knowledge and perception of cities more likely comes from representations rather than direct experience. Hence, the image of the city is highly influential on the impressions of people.  Any visitor of the country over the past seven years seeking to venture into the city of San Fernando, just before the highway turn-off at Tarouba they are greeted by this marvellous masterpiece that is the Brian Lara Stadium.

(No, that is not an error. That is the image I meant to put there).

The stadium was expected to be completed since 2007 and serve as T&T’s showpiece for the 2007 ICC World Cup. Some media reports claim that the arena is the subject of various legal actions between the Government and the contractor as a result of the many infrastructural defects in the construction of the $1 billion Brian Lara stadium which is yet to be officially handed over to the Government.

This is a country in which state-owned buildings, constructed at great cost, are regularly abandoned and left to fall into disrepair, becoming resting places for vagrants and pigeons.

As I perused the San Fernando Development Plan 2010 in all its merits and failures, imagine my surprise when I found the ‘plan’ for not only this structure but for the proposed complex.

Image taken from www.skyscrapercity.com

Behold the Brian Lara Stadium which stands on 180 acres of land, designed by US architectural firm Hellmuth, Obalat & Kassabum, to consist of an aquatic centre, an Olympic-size cycling velodrome and an indoor gymnasium. The anticipated Brian Lara Stadium and Cricket Academy will serve as a training facility for cricketers featuring four indoor cricket training pitches with computerized biometric technology to measure each athlete’s performance, including two full-length run-up pitches for fast-bowlers. The plan for the stadium also boasts of patrons having an unhindered view from every area of the facility with even specifically designed areas for the media. It goes even further in its proposals to declare that the complex may also see the addition of a hotel in the future!

“Struggles over the ways in which urban places are represented are a form of cultural politics, conflicts, often involving unequal power relations, around issues such as the supposed image or identity of places and rights to define these.” – Tim Hall and Heather Barrett, Urban Geography

Despite its initial purpose of promoting pro-urban myths of the city as exciting, cultural and diverse, the fact is that this is another facility that stands empty, even as the citizens of San Fernando and environs continue to search for spaces where their sporting skills can be honed and developed.

With the current sporting facilities in the south, such as Skinner Park, Guaracara Park and the Mannie Ramjohn Stadium, in need of upgrading and burdened by accommodation and infrastructure issues, the need for the Tarouba stadium should be obvious—even if the facility needs to be refocused to accommodate additional sporting disciplines.