In July, we took you inside the Belize Civic Center for a look at how far the contractors had progressed in constructing the new multi-million dollar facility.

Well, 5 months later, and they're just about finished with the construction the CIVIC. The construction team has a few finishing touches that they have to put on the building, and after that they will hand it over to the public.

Now, as you are aware, the construction of this - the most expensive public building in Belize's history - has been a political hot button issue.

So, to keep on the offensive and emphatically make the point that you are getting value for money, Deputy Prime Minister Patrick Faber, the General Manager of BIL, and the architects and contractors hosted public tours of the facility today. They wanted to show the press why the building cost a shade under 33 million dollars.

Deputy PM Faber started by making the point that the building was construction without going over the budget. Here's what he and other at the head table had to say:

Hon. Patrick Faber - Deputy Prime Minister

"I want to begin by dispelling any notion that the center cost any more than the $32.941 million dollars that it cost, so others who are speaking about $40 million that is nonsense. That is one aspect that we hoped you could have asked on, what this money is being spent on."

Christy Mastry - GM, BIL

"We signed the contract in December 2015 and it was a 24-month contract. As the DPM clearly said, it is December and here is the building. The contract was signed for $32,941,000, that is the budget that we have spent to date. We are on time and we are on budget and this is what $32,941,000 in 2017 looks like on the ground."

Daniel Arguelles - Architect, International Environments

"When we started the design process for this building we, and we always try to practice this in all our designs, opted for some sort of eco-friendly building efficiency system. And in this particular building on a whole, the entire building is insolated- all walls, all roofs. For this building to operate the entire AC systems, we have several tiers of AC systems, basic ones as what you can see here in this room and more smart systems that are designed for the arena itself. There are six large smart AC systems that either run under 0 occupancy, shuts off when it is necessary, if it knows that there is no one in the arena or on a packed day, let's say 5 thousand people are in the arena for a nice game, it will keep a temperature of about 73 or 74 degrees consistent. With that, I'm speaking more on the AC system, in the design process we opted to go with new and improved systems that are out there. You'll notice these big green bags that are blown with air in the arena and in and around the hallway, that is a lightweight material, it offers the inefficiencies in dispersing the air easily without the complexities of the isolation processes."

Daniel Ortiz

"Can anyone from the table share with us estimates or plans that you have put together to determine what it will cost to run the facility?"

Christy Mastry

"In full transparency, we were looking at roughly somewhere close to between $800 thousand to $1 million a year. So if the Government took this on as a project that we wanted to maintain a building of this capacity we would say, ok let's go to cabinet, let's staff what we need to staff and let's spend a million a year and put in the books. In best practices right now, in many of the countries, particularly in the region, they are going out to the private sector to create partnerships to turn these building opportunities into business ventures. So we can't shy away from the price to run a facility of this nature. What we can do is put in place the proactive mechanisms to ensure that money is made or generated by the events we have throughout the year to cover those expenses and if possible, create a profit scenario mechanism."

Faber was also asked about the government's process of selecting the private managers who will be the caretakers of the facility when it opens. He said that the companies who expressed interest aren't exactly a fit as yet, and so more time is being taken to choose among those who have made bids:

Hon. Patrick Faber

"We have opted to place the management of this building under a contract; we will contract a management company to do so. And I'm sure that all Belizeans are aware that we invited bids for that some time ago. It was on October 6^th that it was opened up. And we, in fact, closed that or we tried to close the process on the 5^th of December, just last week. We received a total of 5 interested entities. However, we found that none of those who put in the interest met the technical requirements that we were looking for and so we have decided to extend the process and that will now continue up until the end of January. What that means, and let me go back a minute to express why we are hiring a management company instead of managing it ourselves as so many people who are in the social media who are misguided, in my view, put out there. You have seen this facility, those of you who are here with your cameras perhaps can put it out there to our wider Belizean population this evening but you see that it is a state of the art facility. Many of you know that in the past when we've invested big monies in projects that in fact after a little while, a few years maybe, they deteriorate. And so, maintaining a facility like this is going to be crucial as we go forward. We don't have a very good track record of doing maintenance work for these facilities once we've had them."

Now, the Civic will not be open for use until about March or April of next year. That will give the Government time to finalize their contract with the private management company who will take over the day to day management of the facility. Although it is just about finished, the Government want to be careful that proper security and management practices are in place, to ensure that the amenities aren't damaged before they can hand over to the private company. They want to be able to give over management of the facility in "mint" condition.