A novel plan is in the making to combine a number of expanding communities east of the city of Montego Bay and boasting several major hotels along the Elegant Corridor to create Jamaica’s first Tourism Innovation Town.
Minister of Tourism, Hon Edmund Bartlett, who is also Member of Parliament for East Central St. James, disclosed yesterday that “This area is going to be the new Montego Bay of the East and on the industrial side, we are building out 3,300 hotel rooms; 350 to be ready by December of this year and in another two weeks site clearance will commence for another 1,300 rooms with 28-storey towers, over-water villas and luxury cottages.”
The new town will comprise a mix of hotel rooms and housing, taking in communities with an existing total population of about 20,000, with some 15,000 to 20,000 more to be added in the next five years and requiring the infrastructure to support this level of settlement. Mr. Bartlett revealed:
“We’re now talking to the UDC (Urban Development Corporation) about the township of Rose Hall that I want to become what I call the Tourism Innovation Town, which will be the first one of its kind anywhere in the Caribbean.”
The concept is to include housing, public services, light industrial, and commercial development on lands opposite the John Rollins Success Primary School. It will also facilitate the relocation of the Barrett Town Police Station and an upgraded health center to a mini hospital to be more accessible and better able to cater to the needs of more than 40,000 residents and some 20,000 tourists.
As Member of Parliament, Minister Bartlett also plans “to build the school system by rationalizing primary education with the school in the constituency and also build out early childhood education facilities to create the first early childhood innovation center.” The center will cater to 100 students at a time equipped with tablets with their parents also attending “so they will understand what the child is doing to go back home and be able to help the child to develop.”
Presenting it as a different type of education, he said it was one in which knowledge was garnered, but more importantly, focused on how that knowledge is used and converted into practical and material things with value.
Minister Bartlett outlined his plan for the communities at the presentation of titles to 37 occupants of lots in Grange Pen by the Housing Agency of Jamaica at the Lilliput Community Centre on Friday. A total of 535 families are in line to get their titles upon payment of outstanding balances on the $500,000 purchase cost. So far, the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) has spent $964 million upgrading the Grange Pen community, and 1635 units are to be built in this phase of the development.
The community of Barrett Hall, which also lies along the Elegant Corridor of the tourism belt, will also be having infrastructural improvement during the new fiscal year, and 1500 more housing units to be built by the National Housing Trust, starting this year while the nearby community of Spot Valley is to get 585 units.
Stating that the government was not only building houses for workers in the tourism sector, Minister Bartlett said it was also building the source for employment and income. Underscoring the benefit of tourism to the people of St. James, Minister Bartlett credited infrastructural improvements that have enhanced the communities of Flanker, Norwood, Lilliput and Grange Pen “to tourism money doing all of these.”
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SEEN IN IMAGE: Minister of Tourism, Hon. Edmund Bartlett (3rd left), was especially pleased to present an elderly Agatha Allen (2nd left) with the title to her lot at Grange Pen. Ms Allen was delighted, saying she had been looking forward to this moment for over 40 years. They are flanked by the Managing Director of the Housing Agency of Jamaica, Doreen Prendergast and the Chairman of the HAJ, Norman Brown.
Media Contact:
Alyssa Taffe
Communications Officer
Tourism Enhancement Fund
64 Knutsford Boulevard
Kingston 5
Tel: 1(876)908-5970/ Cell: 1-876-441-5055
