PanJam to target waterfront resident wannabes with condos. A place at Caribbean Place, so to speak:
THE REDEVELOPMENT of the former Oceana Hotel includes plans for four floors of condominium units, which will be put on the market for sale.
Another eight floors of the waterfront property will be operated as a hotel.
PanJam Investment Limited said it is yet to hire a developer, but expects full completion of the project in two years. The Jamaican conglomerate owns the waterfront property in partnership with Downing Street Partners Realty of Canada, through an entity called King Church Property Holdings Limited.
“We are probably looking at opening somewhere between January and July of 2019,” said PanJam chief operating officer Paul Hanworth.
Hanworth declined to comment on the indicative costs of completing the redevelopment project – dubbed ‘Caribbean Place’ – saying it could affect ongoing negotiations with prospective contractors.
The King Church partners are reported to have invested $1.15 billion in the first phase of redevelopment, which was spent on parking space, mechanical works and readying the ground floor for office rental to the Accountant General’s Department. The state agency moved into a part of their 50,000-foot accommodation about a month ago.
Hanworth says the really hard slog is to transform the rest of the 12-storey structure – the ground floor is not counted in the 12 storeys – into accommodation for business travellers, a segment of the hospitality market that PanJam believes is underserved and growing in the capital. But they are also targeting persons who want to own a waterfront residence, with condos to be located on the top floors of the building that King Church acquired from the Urban Development Corporation for $385 million.
“We think the other 200,000 square feet should principally be the hotel, but we are also hopeful that we can redevelop Kingston alongside the Government and many other stakeholders into a much more attractive tourist destination,” said Hanworth. “Then there would be a natural fit between the hotel and a leisure market. We would therefore have a product that is both for business and leisure travel,” he told the Financial Gleaner.
The residential component was incorporated in the project as a way to contain the size of the hotel, which the partners want to limit to 129 to 160 rooms.
‘We are saying the top four floors will be a residential condominium-type arrangement which we would sell. We think there would be strong interest
locally and among the diaspora,” said Hanworth. “We also think that there would be strong interest from corporate Jamaica, who may want a downtown condo for visitors,” he said.
Caribbean Place is PanJam’s second hotel investment in Jamaica in the past five years. It is also holds a minor stake in a Miami hotel.
Along with partners from Costa Rica and Trinidad, the property conglomerate developed the Courtyard by Marriott, a 129-room hotel targeted at business travel, which began operating in New Kingston at the end of 2015.
The King Church partners aim to follow that model for Caribbean Place, but so far they are not saying which hotel management company is targeted for partnership. Those talks, too, are ongoing. “We are in discussion with our partners and some hotel brands with regards to how we’d want to position it, who would be interested in flying their flag on it, because we think that international branding is important,” Hanworth said.
The partners are hoping to have sign-off on final designs and budgets, in collaboration with the selected international brand, by the end of 2017, he told the Financial Gleaner. Construction and renovation should take another 12-18 months, he said.
Courtyard Kingston was financed with 50 per cent equity and 50 per cent debt from International Finance Corporation and the InterAmerican Development Bank, according to Hanworth, who says a similar financing mix and funding sources are under consideration for the Caribbean Place project.
“We have spoken to both lenders, who have signalled a willingness to finance the project both through the construction phase and longterm after completion. We will look at that and entertain input from construction financiers in the banking sector, and so on,” the PanJam executive said.