PanJam’s ROK residences to hit the market

PanJam Investment Limited is putting a dozen residential units on the market, the first set among 41 that will sit atop the ROK Hotel on the Kingston waterfront.

However, PanJam Deputy CEO Paul Hanworth says the company will not reveal the cost of the units, not yet.

“We’re still developing some of the marketing collateral material and the public will know a lot more in very short order,” he told the Financial Gleaner.

The 41 residences are being developed on the ninth to 12th floors of the former Oceana Hotel building that the property and investment conglomerate is repurposing into a mixed-use facility.

The ground floor of the complex was leased to state agency the Accountant General’s Department, while floors two to eight are being developed as a hotel that will be named ROK Kingston, a brand owned by Hilton International.

The residences at the very top of the building will be sold to individual investors.

The redevelopment of the Oceana is a $6.5-billion project began by PanJam around four to five years ago, after it acquired the property from another state agency, the Urban Development Corporation.

Oceana first opened its doors back in 1970 as one of the first modern hotels in Kingston. After many years of being used as offices by the Ministry of Health, the building is now being transformed back into a hotel of 168 rooms and 41 luxury apartments by PanJam investments in conjunction with Highgate Hotels and Hilton.

Hanworth says the next winter tourist season, which kicks off annually in December and runs to April of the next year, has been set as a ‘hard target’ for the opening of ROK Kingston.

“We’re still on track for an end of year opening,” he affirmed this week.

Hanworth told the Financial Gleaner that the ROK will be locally managed, in that it will have its own dedicated management team under Highgate, a hotel management company out of New York.

“The intention is to hire as many Jamaicans as we can,” he said.

Highgate has selected Aruban national Jaap van Dam as general manager for ROK Kingston. He formerly ran the Hilton hotel at Rose Hall in Montego Bay that is now held by Playa Hotels.

Hanworth says the new GM came on board recently, and is guiding the pre-opening activities in the run-up to the fourth-quarter launch of operations. Van Dam’s LinkedIn profile says his association with ROK started in February 2021.

The opening of the hotel will come at the end of a year that is off to a good start for PanJam. Net profit for the first quarter squeaked past the $1 billion mark, recovering from the $5 million eked out in the comparative 2020 period when the pandemic began to take its toll, but also outperforming the $892 million made in the pre-pandemic period in 2019.

The company’s minority interest in Sagicor Group, as usual, was the main driver of earnings from associates, but Hanworth said the performance of spice and condiments producer Walkerswood was also noteworthy.

“Walkerswood has been steadily increasing profit and profitability throughout the pandemic. They seem to be benefiting from persons staying at home and experimenting with food. They also have good distribution going up and down the east coast of the USA and even into the mid-west,” he said.

PanJam’s income from investments amounted to nearly $225 million in the March 2021 quarter, reversing a $1.08-billion loss for the similar period in 2020, as the Jamaican and other capital markets experienced a rebound.

“What happened in the first quarter of last year is that every market took a hit, and pretty much plummeted. What you’re seeing now is that both the US and other developed markets have rebounded quite nicely, and we are invested in them,” Hanworth said.

neville.graham@gleanerjm.com