Suite of development projects coming to Montego Bay
THE URBAN Development Corporation (UDC), under the guidance of the Government, is spearheading a number of investment and infrastructural projects in Montego Bay.
The corporation is collaborating with a number of key stakeholders in executing this mandate, which includes the St James Municipal Corporation, the National Environment and Planning Agency, the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF), the Tourism Product Development Company Limited, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Montego Bay Marine Park, among others.
“The city of Montego Bay will not be left behind, but rather will receive its share of the transformative and developmental works being rolled out across Jamaica. The glory days of the UDC are just beginning”, declared Senator Ranford Braham, UDC chairman, during his address at the prime minister’s town hall meeting at the Closed Harbour Beach Park in Montego Bay last week.
As early as January 2019, he noted, ground will be broken on this very plot of land for the construction of the worldclass Closed Harbour Beach Park, making good on the UDC’s promise of providing the people of Montego Bay with their own multipurpose state-of-the-art park to spur further development for the city.
The project, designed and managed by the UDC, will cost approximately J$1.3 billion and is partially funded by the TEF.
In his address, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said that “change is coming to the city of Montego Bay ... we have not turned a blind eye, it will be deliberate, instrumental and beneficial”.
The 16-acre Closed Harbour Beach Park project will be the starting point of a public coastal park system to include the Old Hospital Park and One Man Beach, led by the UDC.
Upon completion, the TEF partially funded project will see the widening of sidewalks and new perimeter fencing along Gloucester Avenue and Howard Cooke Boulevard, and the construction of an interior park system featuring beach futsal and multipurpose courts, kids play areas, food and shopping kiosks, among other amenities.
Montego Bay is also set to benefit from a waterfront rehabilitation project led by the UDC, which will be implemented in tandem with the Closed Harbour Beach Project to rehabilitate the over four decades old groynes, thus reducing shoreline erosion.