UDC goes hunting for Success resort investors
Published:Friday | June 30, 2023 | 1:41 AM
To access this article in full please login or register today
The Urban Development Corporation, UDC, is hunting investors to acquire and develop nearly 70 acres of land on the property known as Success Estate as a resort/residential project. The estate falls within Montego Bay’s ‘elegant resort’ belt at Rose...
The Urban Development Corporation, UDC, is hunting investors to acquire and develop nearly 70 acres of land on the property known as Success Estate as a resort/residential project.
The estate falls within Montego Bay’s ‘elegant resort’ belt at Rose Hall, and the two lots on offer lie in the proximity of the Montego Bay Convention Centre.
The state agency began accepting proposals for the two neighbouring lots last week – the smaller of which is 28.46 acres and the larger 40 acres. Proposals are due by August 24 and the state agency says the lots are being sold individually.
Success Estate is steeped in Jamaica’s plantation era, and was once said to be 775 acres in size. Over time, Success was merged into other estates that came to be known as the Northern Estates. The lands in the area now widely known as Rose Hall have been divested over time, but the UDC has substantial landholdings there.
One of the most recent transactions relating to the Success lands was a US$40-million deal for sale of 96.5 acres by the UDC. That transaction, which was meant to facilitate the development of a casino resort and 2,000 accompanying hotel rooms, was eventually cancelled in mid-2017 after prospective investor Celebrations Jamaica Limited, led by the late Robert Trotta, failed to raise the funds to develop the property.
It’s unclear whether the current lots are encompassed in those acreages.
The lands neighbour the RCD Hotel project, a mixed-use development currently under construction. The foreign investors broke ground on the construction of more than 400 rooms under the UNICO Montego Bay brand late last year, after which it will build roughly 1,000 housing units on neighbourings lands that it will offer for sale to hotel workers.
The incorporation of housing facilities for hotel workers is part of a new push by the government that now sees negotiations for hotel developments in Jamaica incorporating residential housing for employees as a social component, Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett has said.
Zone approvals for the lands now up for sale fit into the Government’s objective.
Over the years, the UDC has done several mixed-use projects in Success Estate, including the Montego Bay Convention Centre, which sits on 32 acres.