HAJ to rename Bernard Lodge housing project

THE HOUSING Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) will be coming up with a new name for its housing project at Bernard Lodge in St Catherine, work on which is scheduled to start within the first quarter of the 2019-20 fiscal year.

Director of technical services at the HAJ, Rosemarie Brown, says that the objective is to distinguish the project from its New Town Bernard Lodge development.

She noted that the projects are often confused and “that we need to make a distinction between the two. The HAJ has internally launched a design competition to find a new name for our Bernard Lodge project”.

The housing development will provide 1,600 solutions comprising approximately 600 studio units and 1,000 one-bedroom houses, mainly for young professionals.

The project will be located on the northern boundary of the Highway 2000 road reservation and will extend from the Lime Tree Grove community in the east for approximately four kilometres to the Windsor Road community in the west.

Meanwhile, New Town Bernard Lodge, also referred to as Greater Bernard Lodge, will be situated on roughly 4,677 acres of land and falls between the Spanish Town and Portmore urban areas.

It includes the provision of some 17,000 houses, as well as schools, fire stations, hospitals, commercial offices and light industrial operations.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in March 2018, announced that Cabinet had approved the Bernard Lodge Land Use Master Plan for the development of a new town in the area once dedicated to sugar-cane farming and sugar manufacture.