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“Bor­ing and un­event­ful”—that’s how some Tarou­ba res­i­dents de­scribed Car­ni­val this year, with the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA) no­tably de­void of fetes for the first time in re­cent mem­o­ry.

For years, ma­jor events such as Xpe­ri­ence, Out In South and Stink n Dut­ty drew large crowds to the Tarou­ba venue, prized for its easy high­way ac­cess, am­ple park­ing and lo­gis­ti­cal ad­van­tages. But last No­vem­ber, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced a ban on fetes at the BLCA, cit­ing com­plaints about noise and dis­rup­tions to near­by com­mu­ni­ties.

Of­fi­cials of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) con­firmed the pol­i­cy, not­ing that the fa­cil­i­ty was con­struct­ed pri­mar­i­ly for sport­ing events such as crick­et. They said dam­age and wear from non-sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, along with high main­te­nance costs not off­set by fete rev­enue, con­tributed to the de­ci­sion.