The body that governs football in the Caribbean says it is committed to consolidating its move to make Jamaica the base of its substantive operations by upgrading a building it owns in the throbbing financial district of New Kingston.

President of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU), Gordon Derrick, hinted that if everything had gone to plan, the operations of the secretariat would have long been moved to the new location, abandoning eventually its rented space on the 10th floor of the Towers located just a stone’s throw from the proposed new home.

The property is located at 29 Tobago Avenue.

The CFU boss said the renovation of the building should have been done with a US$500,000 grant from CONCACAF, but the corruption blaze that engulfed the confederation starting in May last year brought the process to a screeching halt.

“We have a building and we are to renovate it, but that was supposed to come from a grant from CONCACAF, and then all hell broke loose,” Derrick told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview at the current offices.

“That (process of grant) has been on pause, but it was an agreement. But once we can re-regularise that, then we can pursue it again,” said the Antiguan, who is vying for the presidency of CONCACAF.

The New Kingston property was purchased with a FIFA grant of about US$500,000.

The new location, Derrick shared, is to be the hub of the CFU’s operations and is earmarked to house every department set up to effectively run football across the region and to serve its 31 member associations.

“We really wanted a building to accommodate all the departments,” he said.

With ownership of the new piece of real estate in New Kingston, the costs of running the present offices at the Towers, plus maintaining a small office for the president located in his homeland of Antigua, Derrick deemed the undertakings as “a necessary expense”.

Even though the CFU is headquartered in Jamaica, Derrick said with the help of technology he is able to effectively execute his office of president from his home base in St John’s.

“With technology it’s easy… we (president and staff) communicate every day using different means, including video conferences, but, of course we occasionally meet face to face like what we are doing here today,” said Derrick, who was in Jamaica 12 days ago where he met with Kingston-based staff.

The engineer and banker by trade said he is pleased with the direction of the CFU, considering the state it was in when he got elected to the post of president in 2012, after the long-serving Austin ‘Jack’ Warner was forced to leave under a cloud of corruption allegations.

“When I got there, there was no money, no bank account. We had to start operating from zero, and if you look at the work we have done in four years, it’s just phenomenal,” noted the CONCACAF Gold Cup Committee member.

Derrick hopes going forward the CFU can broaden its scope for income generation, and he sees broadcast rights as a big potential money spinner.

“There is the potential to earn from TV rights — and that’s where we want to get — where our tournaments can generate money to run everything else in just the same way the Gold Cup is used to run everything else in CONCACAF,” he said.

For the time being, the CFU is said to generate most of its income through corporate sponsorship and a subvention from CONCACAF, which is US$45,000 per month.

“But when we have our tournaments, which many of them are qualifiers for CONCACAF tournaments, we get another small subvention for each tournament,” Derrick noted.

But whenever there is a shortfall in a budget, Derrick said the CFU would not go to a financial agency to borrow, but would go to its parent bodies for help.

“But if we have to, we borrow money from CONCACAF so we don’t go to any financial institution to borrow money. We are a member of FIFA and CONCACAF is a confederation of FIFA, and if we need money in a worst case scenario, we would go to FIFA and tell them we need money.

“And the last time I checked, I understand that FIFA has US$1.6 billion in reserves, so I don’t see why we have to go to any bank when we are the members,” Derrick stated.