GFF contracts SRKN as acceleration begins on ‘Blue Water Stadium’

The proposed ‘Blue Water Shipping Football Stadium’ will soon be realized, as the Guyana Football Federation (GFF), having already cleared a portion of their 7-acre expanse at Durban Park on Homestretch Avenue in Georgetown, have taken another step towards beginning construction of the international venue.
The GFF has, on Friday, April 26, signed a service agreement with SRKN’gineering and Associates Ltd to the tune of US$156,000, that will see the entity providing consultancy, designs and plans for the venue’s construction.
During his announcement of this development, on Friday at the GFF’s Campbellville Headquarters, President Wayne Forde also divulged some of the features the stadium would have.

“Today I’m happy to announce that we have achieved yet another milestone in the Blue Water Shipping Stadium which will be constructed at our Durban Park site. After several months of diligent engagements and negotiations on the technical and financial aspects of the project’s conceptualization, we have arrived at an agreement with SRKN to design and engineer the Blue Water Shipping Stadium,” Forde divulged, while revealing that CONCACAF and FIFA would provide support for the project.
Forde further disclosed, “On completion, the GFF and Blue Water Shipping will have a facility that will feature the following: main playing area, 4 team locker rooms, official dressing rooms and offices, balls kits dressing room, medical and anti- doping room, recovery area.
“In terms of seating, we’re targeting 8000 to 12,000 seating capacity. There will be special spaces for school kids and special groups, accessibility for the physically challenged, additional bleacher seating at the mini pitches, which will be two of them on the Hadfield side of the facility.”

With the Stadium’s name coming from a naming rights agreement between the GFF and Blue Water Shipping, the company’s Senior Vice- President of Operations, Jennifer Falconer, touched on the impact of this investment when she expressed, “Blue Water is thrilled to partner with the GFF for this state-of-the-art, and as Mr. Forde would’ve mentioned, one-of-its-kind-in-Guyana football stadium. As a leading organization, committed to fostering sports and community growth, Blue Water believes this investment will have a transformative impact on the local football ecosystem. We have had the privilege of seeing the initial blueprint of the facility, and I can tell you it will be amazing.”
SRKN Director Ravi Narine spoke to the magnitude of the investment while promising some acceleration of their work, in spite of the 6–8-month deadline given.
“This is a special project for us, because of the benefits it will bring to the football fraternity in Guyana; and as Mr. Forde said, and Blue Water, this will open up the door for us to have international events. Our work has actually started already. So, we’ll put a bit more pressure on the accelerator to ensure that, this 8 months, we will finish this design and a cost estimate,” Narine shared.
As SRKN utilise their 6–8-month timeframe, it is expected that some work will commence at the venue shortly, as narrated by the GFF boss. “For now, we know what we need to do. Now we know we need to clear the land; we know we need to so some sand-filling,” Forde revealed. “These are things that are essentially part of the project, but we don’t need to wait on a complete engineering package. The evidence and the need for that is right before us: a lot of trees, a lot of lowland, a lot of water accumulation.”
The GFF president said regarding cost of the facility, “Once we have the estimates completed, which is the end-side of the engineering processes, we will know the true cost to do the facility; and at that point we’ll be able to have more concrete discussions with all the funders of the project.”
The GFF have a 50-year lease for the plot of land at Durban Park, acquired back in 2019.