Marion Jones Complex Nearing Completion

The Marion Jones Sporting Complex is finally looking at completion. Since its groundbreaking in August 2009, the projected launch of the state of the art facility has been put off multiple times.  In fact, the fence was constructed by a company operated by the current Minister of State in the Minister of Sports, Herman Longsworth, long before the new five-storey seating multimillion-dollar facility was built. Well, it’s been almost six years, and after several false alarms, the almost sixteen million dollar building retrofitted with press boxes, office spaces for the National Sports Council, ticket booths, concessionary stands, locker rooms and a VIP lounge is about to finish. This afternoon, there was a soft launch of the sporting complex with Longsworth providing a tour. He explains the reason behind the drawn out process.

Herman Longsworth, Minister of State, Ministry of Sports

“It has been a long drawn out process certainly because it wasn’t financed by any loan as such. The monies came out of the government funds and so it took a bit of time; we only put out so much every year to achieve what we want. But I think we’ve done quite a bit here now. We will certainly be able to immediately have cycling, football…we have track already, we have beach volleyball. That is what we are going to immediately be able to have with this facility. But I am certain in the very short future, by the middle of the year I believe, construction should start on an indoor facility—a building that is going to be built just to the north end there of this facility—and then we are going to be able to have volleyball, basketball, all the indoor stuff….table tennis, karate, boxing; that sort of thing.”

Duane Moody

“Talk to us about the structure and the different sections that it has?”

Herman Longsworth

Herman Longsworth

“First of all, you have a full facility. If you go abroad, you will see additional seating, but you will always see one portion of the facility that is huge. It contains all the concession areas where people purchase food and stuff. It contains all the athlete areas—the locker rooms and all the things for athletes. It contains bathroom facilities for the public to use, all the seatings, all the concessionary areas; the VIP section which is on the fifth floor; the press boxes for you guys and on the third level, it will be the offices for the national sports council. So that basically is what we have here. It is a huge facility, but specifically geared towards the athletes and the public to view sports.”

Duane Moody

“What was the cost it came out to?”

Herman Longsworth

“This project is at just under sixteen million right now; this building.”

Duane Moody

“And there is still more to go…”

Herman Longsworth

“There is considerably more to go because as I was explaining earlier, when the entire project was put out to tender, it had come in at much higher than the budget that government had. So they had to scale the project down and do it in two phases. This is the first phase. The entire cost if I remember, the tender that had come in, was either twenty or twenty-one million dollars. So we still have that much more to go.”

Some minor tidying works are being done on the facility in preparation of the commitment to have Band Fest 2015 this Saturday at the Marion Jones Sporting Complex.