Ching Athletic Complex finally gets a kick-start

When they announced the naming of the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletic Complex at the University of Hawaii in 2008, basketball coach Bob Nash and football coach Greg McMackin were among the notable attendees.

Going on four years later, neither of them are still employed and ground remains to be broken on $10 million in renovation and improvements to the former Cooke Field.

Which tells you a little about why the $3 million allocation last week to “expediate construction and completion” of the project scheduled to begin as early as May was so significant.

It isn’t just that the facility, which will be a refurbished on-campus home for football, track and field, soccer and sand volleyball, among other sports, is both much needed and overdue.

It is also a hopeful statement about addressing deepening facilities concerns on the lower campus and across-the-board competitiveness.

Just recently, in fact, new football coach Norm Chow led legislators and some other heavy hitters on what we’re told was an eye-opening  tour of athletic facilities to drive home that point.

The $5 million pledged by the Ching Foundation for the project in 2008 is the best chance to start making some immediate inroads on the situation. The Ching gift remains the largest single gift ever offered for UH sports and it came with the proviso that UH and the state would come up with matching funds to make the facility a reality.

Since state dollars have been few and far between, UH is going to have to increasingly rely upon donations and matching funds if it is to have any hope of upgrading facilities and being competitive with the schools it goes against for recruits. In this, the gift of the late developer and UH fan can be both an inspiration and a model.     

But had the Ching money been allowed to languish without UH lifting so much as a shovel, it would have sent a message to anybody approached about or contemplating a donation for other facilities. How, prospective donors would have retorted, can you hit us up for money when you haven’t begun to pour concrete on the Ching Complex yet?

From the time UH began casting about for a donor in 2004 until the Ching Foundation was approached in 2007, too much time and too many potential opportunities had already been squandered or allowed to lapse.

So when a timetable was announced Friday for seeking bids and getting Ching construction under way, track coach Carmyn James exulted. “The talk that it is finally going to happen, well, that’s just awesome,” James said.

When completed — and the target date is by the end of 2013, which athletic director Jim Donovan said, “is pretty realistic right now.”  — the complex will also be home to intramural activities and high school and community events.

“It has taken a little longer than we thought, but we’re still on track,” said R. Stevens Gilley, president of the Ching Foundation.

Not a moment too soon, either.

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.