Mahler doubles as the Minister of Sports and explained that there are exciting things coming for the stadiums across the country. Renovations will start with Marion Jones, which he says will be improved to include better facilities, a rock climbing gym and tennis courts.
But he lamented that the ministry receives only a small budget so progress is slow.
Anthony Mahler - Minister of Tourism, Youth & Sports
"Marion Jones is going to be deemed a high performance center so we're going to have four across the country but we're going to start focusing on Marion Jones. In terms of Marion Jones the works are ongoing, if you go there, there are a lot of land clearing, trying to get the place ready for some of the heavy works we're want to do and some of the upgrades, the Mexico Center is almost complete, the courts are underway to Belize, the new courts we're going to put down there, we have ordered the rims and so a lot of work is going out there. Actually we're doing a masterplan for the entire compound whereby we're looking at putting an Olympic size swimming pool, rock climbing, two tennis courts, a bunch of stuff so that you have public spaces and competition spaces, the problem with our facilities is that everybody accesses them, all day and they break up the facilities when we're trying to maintain them so we have works at Marion Jones, we have works going on at Roger's Stadium, we have works going on at MCC, People's Stadium, a couple others."
"As you know we have a small budget so we have pick projects at a time, we don't have this big exhaustive budget and a field is expensive. We are trying to do it in a very cost effective way so that's why we've partnered with Football Federation of Belize because it helps them with their mandate as well for FIFA."
Courtney Menzies
"How do you ensure the preservation of the new facilities?"
Anthony Mahler - Minister of Tourism, Youth & Sports
"Well, fence and security. So we're working on a camera system for all the facilities, and we're going to have a camera room where we can look at all the facilities and we're going to have public spaces that you can use and do an exercise or a recreation or do whatever you want, relax. And then we're going to have competition spaces that are going to be more stringent to get in."
