By Adrian Frater, Staff Reporter
Johnny Gourzong
WESTERN BUREAU:
IN THE wake of Tuesday morning's incident in which Sumfest promoters were evicted from the Catherine Hall Entertainment Centre by the officials of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), officials are now seeking a long-term arrangement for the use of the property.
"We will be aggressively seeking to establish a long term arrangement with the UDC for the future use of the site," said Gourzong, whose organisation was forced to pay up over $350,000 that was owed to the UDC prior to being allowed back on the site. "We definitely would not want to have a recurrence of this lock-out incident."
According to Gourzong, under the current year-by-year arrangement Summerfest has with the UDC, planning ahead is very difficult since there are no guarantees that they will be allowed to use the site and if so, under what terms and conditions.
"If we had a long term arrangement, we could really do ongoing maintenance, which would eliminate some of the last minute things we have to had to do now," said Gourzong. "Under the current arrangement, we are not allowed to put up permanent structure so each year we have to come here and put up new stalls, new fencing, bush the compound and generally put the venue in shape for the festival."
In addition to the absence of a long-term lease, Gourzong is also peeved about the fact that the UDC has not done any substantial work on the site since it was created for the inaugural staging of Reggae Sumfest in 1993. According to him, since giving them the partially incomplete venue 10 years ago, the UDC has done nothing to improve the facilities.
"We started out with a site that was only partially finished and we have had to be putting in the other infrastructure we need each year," said Gourzong, "If we had a long term arrangement, we would not having to be pulling down the things we erect after each show."
Tuesday's lock down of the site stemmed from Summerfest Productions' failure to pay more than $350,000 in security and GCT fees to the UDC. According to Gourzong, they had paid the $750,000 in rental and had intended on paying the other sum at a later date.
