Tasmania’s return to the NBL will begin on opening night of the 2021-22 season — if the DEC upgrade is completed on time
An eight-month window to complete the upgrades to the Derwent Entertainment Centre is all that stands in the way of the Tasmania JackJumpers launching the 2021-22 NBL season at home.
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THE hopes of the NBL’s newest team making a grand entrance and launching the 2021-22 season at home hinge on the Derwent Entertainment Centre redevelopment being completed on time.
On his first visit to the state since the announcement Tasmania would return to the league next year, NBL owner and CEO Larry Kestelman declared his vision for the JackJumpers to open their venture in front of home fans.
To do so the $41 million DEC upgrade, which is ahead of schedule with stage one completed, must defy extremely tight time frames to be ready by October next year.
“I would love for the first game of the season to be launched with the new team, that would be amazing,” Mr Kestelman said on his first inspection of what will become a state of the art venue on Monday.
“We normally start first week of October, COVID will dictate if that continues to be exactly the same but we’re planning for October 1 and we’d love for the JackJumpers to be playing in that opening week here.
“That would be our number one goal.
“You have contingency plans and I was just saying to the premier that even if need be, we’ve got a little bit of leeway, we don’t necessarily have to schedule the first home game day one of the season.
“We could probably give ourselves a week or two of the team being on the road.
“It was always going to be tight and then the delay of nearly six months with COVID has made it extraordinarily tight.
“But we as a team are up for it and we’ll make sure that it happens, hell or high water, we will make sure that this venue is up and running for the October start of the season.”
While the refurbishment of the DEC into the JackJumpers’ “nest” will be the centrepiece for the team, Mr Kestelman has grand visions for the venue.
He hopes to see it operational 100 days a year, and believes it could attract a price tag of between $700,000 to $1 million for naming rights.
“The DEC will not be a permanent training facility for [the JackJumpers], even though we’ll have courts down when we can.
“The plan is for this venue to be quite frankly too busy to be able to have them training here regularly.
“We intend to turn it into the “nest” for the JackJumpers, but much more so into a community place that people can gather, and be uplifted and entertained.”
Premier Peter Gutwein, who has regularly referred to Mr Kestelman as a “force of nature”, said tenders for stage two of the redevelopment will close December 21.
“Out of all of the people that I could think of to actually get this job done by October next year, Mr Kestelman is one of the very few I think in the world that would be able to do it,” he said.
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