KRC offers sublease for old rum stores
Published:Friday | February 18, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Partial to IT investors
The Kingston Restoration Company (KRC) is seeking candidates to rent downtown property, which it says can be used for any labour-intensive venture, including information technology projects.
KRC executive director Morin Seymour touts the three-acre property on Marcus Garvey Drive, opposite the Jamaica Livestock Association, as one of the largest available for commercial operations in downtown Kingston.
The site of an old rum-storage operation, it comprises three buildings of 16,431 sq ft, 20,267 sq ft and 16,408 sq ft, plus a ruin which Seymour says can be upgraded for use on the site.
"We are the only site like this, all other sites over one acre are gone," Seymour stated last Friday.
The KRC holds the lease for the lot, which has 49 more years to run.
Seymour said his organisation desired occupants whose ventures would bring significant employment.
"As we pursue the redevelopment of the city, each time we need to think of the employment capacity of each investment," he said.
The director noted that the old Machado complex on Victoria Avenue, that KRC sold last yearto the Urban Development Corporation for its new headquarters, was once the site of a garment venture which employed 1,100 workers.
Job creators wanted
The UDC paid J$80 million for the property which sits on three acres of land.
For its Marcus Garvey site, the KRC has requested expressions of interest from companies in the information technology business as, according to Seymour, the sector is the number-one growing business enterprise for Latin America and the Caribbean, with the potential to employ large numbers.
The director said that two serious offers had come from large manufacturing companies, which had nothing to do with IT, but said that the advertisement for offers would continue to run to get "the best responses".
Seymour is hoping that the site will provide employment for residents of nearby inner-city areas.
"We are targeting people who will take the bus to work or walk to work. It is one sure way of beating back the unusual problems of our society," he said.
"Large numbers of young people are leaving high school and training programmes and are not being employed. They need work, otherwise we will need to double our security bill."
The KRC, he says, "will not turn away from any operation which will achieve large employment numbers."
Established in 1983 by the Jamaican Government, in collabo-ration with a group of building societies, commercial banks and insurance companies, the KRC has executed an inner-Kingston Development Project, which involved providing additional workspace for commercial expansion in downtown Kingston, and restoring that area as a centre of economic activity and job creation.
The KRC was responsible for the restoration of Duke and King streets, as well as the implemen-tation of a demolition programme, in which buildings beyond repair, some of them said to be hideouts for criminals, were demolished and replaced by parking lots and parks.