Civic Ready for Grand Opening with all-City Basketball Showdown

Lucinda Castillo

The Civic Center is officially opening its doors to the Belizean public tonight for a much talked about showdown between the Smart Belize Hurricanes and the Belize City Defenders.  It’s a basketball game that promises as much hype on the court as it does during halftime, with performances from a host of Belizean artists.  It has arguably been the longest day for event coordinators at Apex Events Services, who have been on the ground since early this morning tying all the loose ends in anticipation of the grand opening.  We caught up with administrative manager Lucinda Castillo this afternoon.

Lucinda Castillo, Administrative Manager, Apex Events Services Belize

“It is a hustle and a bustle in here today.  We are getting everything underway but I think we are almost there.  So it’s setting up of the bars, assisting persons who are doing the concession stands for food tonight.  I’ve been on a couple talk shows this morning, we’ve been trying to put our final pitch out, working with our ticketing booth downstairs.  We have a crowd coming in today for tickets and we’ve been open since last week Wednesday, but Belizean style is that you go buy your stuff on the last day.  So our ticket booths are open until nine-thirty tonight or until we sell out and we are on the verge of almost selling out.  So we invite people to come in as quickly as you can to buy your tickets.  I think there is only one or two tiers left remaining and those are all general admission.  It’s just been preparing and making sure.  We’ve been in here seven days a week.  Mr. Guthrie and I, the general manager, we have been here seven days a week right now, almost sixteen to eighteen hour days preparing for tonight to try and make sure that everything is in place, everything is ready, the seats that needed to be fixed a little, tweaked a little, the way we wanted them to be, the lighting that we have set up for tonight to make sure that our entertainment for the halftime show are prepared, they’ve been doing their practices.  We’ve also had the teams, the Hurricanes and the Defenders in here during the course of the week to practice.”