How the Sunshine City was developed

THE CONCEPTUALISATION of Portmore as a community was the brainchild of the late Moses Matalon. He was then the chairman of the Urban Development Corporation and spearheaded the redevelopment of downtown Kingston with the removal of the old piers in the Kingston Harbour and the establishment of up-to-date port facilities at Newport West and Newport East.

A massive dredging exercise was carried out to create the deepwater pier that would

accommodate the newer, larger ships and help position Kingston as a major trans-shipment port. This dredging was carried out by Construction and Dredging, which along with West Indies Home Contractors (WIHCON), was owned by the Matalon family, well known for being the first major housing developers in Jamaica. West Indies Home Contractors Limited had already built Mona Heights, Harbour View, Duhaney Park and Hughenden and was on the lookout for areas of relatively flat land to build the large number of houses the company had a reputation of constructing and that the population of the capital city sorely needed to expand. There were limited large land spaces suitable in Kingston.

ACCESS

At that time, Portmore could only be accessed by Mandela Highway, which was then a singlelane road and was far from the hub of activity in downtown Kingston. The commute was long and so the area was not particularly attractive to purchasers.

Matalon envisioned dredging an area from Portmore and another from Newport on either side of the harbour that would allow for a causeway to be built which would link the communities of downtown Kingston and the mostly uninhabited area of Portmore.

Some of the land was swamp and the rest was marginal land not suitable for agriculture but ideal for housing.

Construction and dredging filled the areas that were needed and prepared and sold the land to WIHCON which then began the construction and sale of Independence City and many other developments in Portmore in subsequent years. The construction of the bridge provided that easy access to the area and made the location attractive to prospective purchasers.

At this time, it became obvious that large lower and middleincome developments could not continue to be financed by foreign institutions as had been the norm as the foreign exchange risk was too great.