Modern Philsports edifice to house NSAs

At least 14 national sports associations holding office at the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex will be relocated at the Philsports in Pasig as part of a plan to put NSAs closer to their athletes and give them more decent and spacious national headquarters complete with seminar, dining and other facilities.

Philippine Olympic Committee president Celso Dayrit said the transfer of NSA offices will start next year. The Philippine Sports Commission has completed renovation of four floors of the Philsports building which used to house athletes training at the sports complex since the Marcos administration.

The POC and the PSC had considered transferring NSAs to the complex to give them more decent, spacious quarters. NSAs holding office at the RMSC are cramped into small offices that can accommodate only two regular employees. Eight are located on the second floor while the others are scattered throughout the complex, on vacant spaces previously used as storage houses.

The Philsports building has spacious air-conditioned rooms and boasts of function rooms for seminars and conferences, complete with audiovisual materials, as well as dining and lounging amenities for athletes, NSA officials and guests.

NSAs enjoy PSC subsidy through free electricity and water and free use of office space and are likely to be entitled to the same privileges.

The plan is to eventually relocate, under one roof, the 38 or more NSAs which are either regular or associate members of the POC or are POC-recognized associations.

In Malaysia, the Malaysian Olympic Committee has constructed its own multi-story building, which now houses all its member-associations as well as a sports store and library open to the public.

Dayrit, who received a fresh mandate after beating athletics chief Go Teng Kok in last November’s elections, inspected the Philsports building recently.

"We haven’t finalized it (the transfer) yet, but I think the place there is a good one and it could really look good and nice if most NSAs stayed under one roof," said Dayrit.

The POC plan was long hatched by former POC chief and retired general Rene Cruz and former PSC chairman Philip Ella Juico but never got off the launching pad until recently.