Time and again, in my commentaries, I have been obliged to return to the vexed issue of the total lack of appropriate venues for large stage shows and open-air concerts in Jamaica. The latest casualty of this deficiency was Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay, this past July.

Sydney Reid, the Summerfest productions director who manages the venue for the festival each year, told me that this staging was the most challenging for him so far, because of the adverse effects to the venue resulting from weeks of rainfall.

To give some background to this issue, phase one of the Catherine Hall venue was hurriedly constructed by the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) in 1993. This was to facilitate the first staging of Reggae Sumfest by some very enterprising Montego Bay businessmen.

Consequently, some essential features of the venue were poorly thought-out and designed. So, for instance, one set of public bathroom facilities was near the front of the audience. This is very impractical, in relation to crowd control and the convenience of patrons who wish to use these facilities during an event. In a thick crowd, access to and from the restrooms is very difficult, time-consuming and even treacherous, especially given the present impolite disposition of a segment of our local audiences.

The Bob Marley Centre had initially been established in 1983 for the production of the world music festival. The stage was originally located at the extreme tip of the peninsular, to allow for audiences upwards of 100,000 people. However, the long, narrow shape of the land necessitated a massive amount of equipment to fill this large area of over 11 acres with adequate sound. When Sunsplash returned to the park in 1987, we decided to use only two-thirds of the venue as the main concert area. In its original design, therefore, the public sanitary facilities were located about equal distant from the back or front of the park. However, although we had relocated the production area, since these facilities were already in place we continued make use of the existing bathrooms, although they were quite close to the stage. During the peak hours of the 1987 festival, its impracticality became very obvious to us, as traffic slowed tremendously, while (mostly) men resorted to urinating on the perimeter verges, and in the sea. By the following year, therefore, we were compelled to construct additional facilities at the back of the park, to ameliorate this inconvenience and public health problem.

Without accurate knowledge of this history, the UDC simply proceeded to perpetuate this health and crowd control hazard into the design and construction of the new Catherine Hall venue. To make matters worse, since phase one, the UDC has not continued to envisage further development of the Catherine Hall Centre, except for the misguided laying of top soil. For the first year of Sumfest, the developers had surfaced the venue with marl, and Sydney Reid tells me that, then, the water drained off within five minutes, even after a very heavy shower of rain. The problem, of course, was that the marl surface was not conducive to a high comfort level of patrons. The addition of top soil was the next logical step, therefore, for a tropical outdoor venue. To do this correctly would have required the prior installation of a proper irrigation and drainage system, so as to maintain the grass and effectively manage our seasonal flood waters. By the second night this year, the top soil became eight soggy inches of pure mud. Under the circumstances, the traditional solution of using sawdust to sop up the excess water was of no use whatsoever. Instead, Sydney said he tried some rather novel approaches to mitigate the problem. Daily, he pumped more than 170,000 gallons of water out of the venue using various means, but this process had to be halted each day when patrons began entering the park. Numerous truckloads of crushed stones were also used in an attempt to displace some of the mud. This no doubt helped to ease the adverse conditions somewhat, but this problem now needs a long-term solution by the appropriate authorities.

The total design, layout and construction of the Catherine Hall Centre has to be revamped given the experiences of the festival over the last 17 years. In so doing, the upgraded centre must include an adequate parking area, specially prepared and constructed primarily for that purpose.

It is not coincidental that Montego Bay has been staging most of Jamaica’s largest festivals annually since Sunsplash began there in 1978. It is the most suitable location in Jamaica for this type of event, because of the pre-existing essential features, facilities, amenities, and public services. These include the largest stock of hotel rooms; an international airport and wharf; a public transportation system; public utilities such as electricity (including its own generating plant as a major component of the grid) and potable water; a significant contingent of security forces; a wide array of restaurants, shopping malls, night clubs; also, most importantly, it has a public garbage collection system and an integrated public sanitary disposal system. This is complemented by numerous businesses, such as tour bus operators and motor vehicle rental companies, and many tourist attractions in Montego Bay proper and all along the north coast.

If, indeed we are serious about exploiting the competitive advantage bequeathed to us by the popularity of Reggae music, we need to redouble our efforts to further tap into the niche market of patronage to international live events. This will certainly enhance our present tourism product. Within this context, Montego Bay deserves a proper entertainment park, with facilities which would also include a theatre for the performing arts.

che.campbell@gmail.com