On behalf of Zoo Lake Sports Club, I would like to apologise to all of our neighbours as well as the residents of the greater Zoo Lake precinct and surrounds for the noise and inconvenience caused by the event held on Saturday, 12 March.
As a club, our emphasis has always been on working with the community and ensuring all members of our society have access to our facilities; whether it be an under-privileged local school needing a soccer field to play on or the group of elderly ladies who feel unsafe in the park and prefer the security of perambulating around our fields. We strive to be approachable and accountable and we always try to ensure a good relationship with neighbouring residents and businesses.
On occasion, however, errors are made and, Saturday, 12 March appears to have been one such occurrence. Whilst we did not organise the event nor did we – as a club – arrange any of the related entertainment or security, we did agree to be the venue to play host to this event and, as such, take responsibility and would like to once again apologise for upsetting the very people within our community whose support and trust we value.
As leaseholders of this property, we take our position seriously and have – at great personal cost – invested millions into the improvement and upgrading of this previously derelict and thoroughly vandalised property. Much like most of the other sports clubs within Johannesburg, it is a constant struggle to ensure the continuation of the maintenance of the grounds and buildings without receiving any funding or rebates from any entity whatsoever. This sadly means that we do, on occasion, find ourselves having to look further afield to bring in additional revenue in order to cover the mounting costs of improvements or upgrades.
So where to from here and how do we – as a sports club – regain the confidence of you, our neighbours? I wish I could promise that we would never make any noise in the future, but sadly this is – by the very nature of a sports club – impossible. I would also dearly love to promise you all that the whistles of our referees and the cricket pitch roller would no longer be heard. In addition, I would relish the opportunity of assuring you that the soccer players would stop congratulating each other so loudly on the field and that the tournaments we host in future won’t have music or a PA system. But once again, sadly, I cannot.
What I can do, however, is assure you that we won’t allow events of this nature to be hosted at our venue again. It is obvious that – although all sound regulations were, according to the engineer, adhered to on the day – this genre of music is not suitable for our area and respect needs to be given to our residents who already have to put up with so much continuous noise from the Zoo Lake Park (which is, as I type this, booming).
In closing, I would ask our neighbours and our community to please continue to partner with Zoo Lake Sports Club. One only has to look at the old Parkhurst Soccer/Bowling club property (amongst thousands of others) to envisage what would become (once again) of this land as well as the area security and property values should Zoo Lake Sports Club be forced to close.
Thank you for taking time to read this and please don’t hesitate to contact me should you have any queries, suggestions or comments.
Details: admin@zoolakesportsclub.co.za
