The future is bright at the Mount Isa Multipurpose Sport and Rec Centre aka the Basketball Stadium.
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Mount Isa's premier indoor sports venue was hit badly by a leaking roof earlier in the year and the Mount Isa Basketball Association bit the bullet in August closing down the facility for seven weeks to do repairs.
The upgrade cost $300,000 funded by insurance with a specialist court surfacing group coming up from Brisbane to do the work.
On the weekend all the hard work paid off with a grand re-opening celebration.
Mount Isa Basketball Association president Jerome Sopoaga said celebrations has started the night before, when various community leaders and businesses came together.to get a sneak preview of the work before the public got to check it out on the Saturday.
"We've been closed since early August so we are very excited to have our nice new timber floor," Mr Sopoaga said.
"It came about through our insurers Elders after some water damage so we are here to celebrate the reopening."
Mr Sopoaga said they took the opportunity of closure to do work on the toilets, carpets and put in new signage.
He said the centre would be firing up after the school holidays with new seasons in basketball, volleyball and futsal.
"Hopefully in the new year we'll have mixed netball," he said.
He said the basketball junior program was attracting a lot of new talent, but they are still looking for more women to play the sport.
Mayor Danielle Slade said the MIBA had done a great job to restore the court to its former glory.
She also said Mount Isa City Council were encouraging participation in sport by reimbursing membership fees of local sporting clubs for eligible Council employees.
The upgrade was also close to the heart of deputy mayor Phil Barwick who was heavily involved both in basketball administration in the city in the initial commissioning of the indoor sports complex in the early 2000s.
"I know pretty much every nut and bolt in the place," Cr Barwick said.
"What's great to see is people still administering this centre and looking after it, having something like this done is fabulous, there has been a lot of work behind the scenes to get something like this happening, it's not easy to get contractors."
Cr Barwick said he was delighted with all the lines and markings on the court, denoting the various courts for basketball, volleyball, netball and futsal.
"When we originally built the centre it was to make it a multi-purpose centre and encourage as many people as possible to use it to play indoor sport," he said.
":What could be better to play nighttime out of the sun in a place like Mount Isa, it is a fabulous venue for that."
READ ALSO: Work starts on Mount Isa CBD Masterplan
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