Lights coming soon for Stadium basketball courts

Denzil Wilks, general manager of the Sports Development Foundation (SDF), says lights will soon be installed at the newly renovated National Stadium basketball courts at Independence Park.

Wilks told The Gleaner that after several delays, the refurbishing work on the courts has now been completed and they are working assiduously to have the lights installed at the facility.

“The courts are now finished and so what we are working on now are the lights,” said Wilks. “We are in procurement mood and we are basically at the end of that and so the work that goes into putting up the lights will begin in a pretty short while,” he said.

“It has been a long while in coming because we had a lot of problems there.

If you recall, after we put one layer on the courts we had to dip it up because there is a drainage system that runs under the courts and so it has been a long time in coming,” Wilks said.

The SDF boss, who put the cost of the refurbishing work is approximately $35 million, added that the delay in the instalment of the lights has also severely affected the ongoing National Basketball League because there cannot be any night games at the venue.

Meanwhile, as part of the refurbishing work, the seating capacity has expanded from 400 to 1,000 at the facility.