Today, we publish the fourth of 15 stories on the nominees for the Jamaica Observer Business Leader Corporate Award. To be considered for nomination, all companies had to be at least 50 years old, or be able to trace their roots to 1962 or before. The award presentation and announcement of the Business Leader Corporate will take place on Sunday, December 2, at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston.

IF you are travelling southbound from Manor Park in St Andrew, and your route takes you through New Kingston, you will encounter constant reminders of the impressive body of work that one of Jamaica’s most prolific real estate developers can claim to its credit.

Of course, your very starting point is dotted with some of the first and finest structures that Maurice Facey’s Pan Jamaican Investment Trust Ltd laid down in the years following Independence.

The most visible is the Manor Park Plaza. After nearly 50 years, it remains a favourite among Kingston’s well-heeled shoppers, and a much sought-after commercial marketplace for retailers.

Towering over the plaza to its east is the multi-storey Manor Court apartments — an eye-catching building that combines luxury and security. This residence was tailor-made to suit the taste and lifestyle of the young and emerging corporate executive class within 1970s Jamaica, and it was they who in large numbers called it home.

You will be forgiven if another development — the Manor House townhouses and detached homes — escapes your view. This mixed, high-end residential community shares border with the plaza, but is discreetly tucked away, surrounded by perimeter walls that make the homes virtually invisible from the outside.

Midpoint into the journey towards downtown is New Kingston, the heart and soul of Pan Jamaican’s rich real estate legacy.

It is no exaggeration to assert that the island’s most important business district owes its existence to Pan Jamaican Investment. While it is true that this company did not have a hand in all the developments that make up this iconic corporate community, there can be little doubt that developers who came after were following Pan Jam’s lead, and drew heavily on its template.

To truly appreciate just how transformative Pan Jamaican has been as a builder of edifices, one has to see the projects that it pursued and the vision that underpinned them, through the lens and mindset of 1960s Jamaica.

Pan Jamaican Investment was formally created around 1968, but can trace its roots to a decade earlier when Maurice Facey found himself with a cash mountain — having negotiated the sale of his father’s trading firm, Cecil B Facey Ltd, to the American manufacturing and distribution giant, Seagrams Ltd, in 1958.

With their £500,000 the Faceys formed a company called Boswell Trust, and led by Maurice began to buy empty lots for development. In the late 1950s, he built and sold a single-family house in Cherry Gardens — then considered rural St Andrew.

It was a modest start, but the success gave the young Facey confidence. He began buying bush lands: Manor Park, Norbrook, and several acres at a virtually uninhabited place now known as New Kingston. He also snapped up empty lots along Kingston’s waterfront.

The Faceys registered the Jamaica Property Company Ltd in 1964 as the formal vehicle for their expanded foray within the construction industry.

The Manor Park Plaza for which ground was broken in 1964 was Jamaica Property’s first major project. The three-phase development included the shopping mall, the high-rise apartment complex, and Manor Court, the latter done over two phases. Residences were also built in Norbrook Acres and Drumblair also in St Andrew.

Some of the structures conceived by this company truly expanded the real estate possibility frontier within 1960s Jamaica. Their boldness in design and scope is amplified when one considers that Jamaica had only recently begun producing its own cement when the building plans were on the drawing board.

Between 1965 and 1966, the first blocks were laid for the Air Jamaica building on Harbour Street in downtown Kingston. Close on the heels of this high-rise office, work began on the IBM Building on Knutsford Boulevard, as well as the CHFC (formerly NCR) building on Caledonia Road, near Cross Roads, Kingston.

In 1966, Facey merged Jamaica Properties with Pan Jamaican Investment Trust, a company that had just been registered by another group of investors who shared his vision of transforming Kingston’s real estate landscape. He held an estimated 30 per cent interest in the merged entity.

Jamaica Property became a subsidiary of Pan Jam and going forward would be the vehicle through which real estate projects would be developed and executed.

In 1970, the architectural drawings for the high-rise Manor Court apartments, that had been on hold for at least five years, were finally dusted off and put into action. The construction brought the Manor Park development closer to conclusion. It was followed by the final project: Phase II of the Manor Court townhouses.

Pan Jamaican stepped up its construction activities during the 1970s and into the 1980s. In fact, it is fair to say that this period marked the firm’s most productive phase of building. Some of the structures that went up during this period are now inseparable from the corporate identity of the Pan Jam group.

The many landmark multi-storyed complexes on Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston are the obvious cases:

* The Victoria Mutual building, just metres away from the IBM building that was built during the 1960s,

* PanCaribbean Bank building,

* The First Life building,

* The Courtleigh Hotel — formerly the Marcus Garvey Building,

* The CIBC Centre.

The 97,000 square-foot Scotiabank Centre on Port Royal Street, downtown Kingston on which work began in 1972 dwarfed the nearby Air Jamaica building that Jamaica Property — Pan Jam’s forerunner — constructed in the 1960s.

Other residential developments include:

* The 120-unit Abbey Court condominium at the corner of Trafalgar and Hope roads,

* The 14-acre Acadia townhouses and single houses,

* The Barcelona apartments on Seaview Avenue,

* The Seville on East King’s House Road,

* Fort George residential lots on Stony Hill Road,

* Chancery Hall and Cardiff Hall residential lots.

Pan Jamaican’s first major diversification was in 1969 when Hardware & Lumber (H&L) went public on the newly formed Jamaica Stock Exchange. It spent £1.6 million to stage a hostile takeover of this publicly listed firm — ultimately wrestling ownership and control from the hands of the previous owners and founders.

The fact that H&L retailed a wide range of construction products, was a manufacturer of awnings and office partitions, and offered lumber treatment, office cleaning and sanitation services made it a good fit for the developer.

H&L was initially taken private, but was later relisted.

In the 1980s, Pan Jamaican found itself at the epicentre of an interesting dynamic that played out within the real estate and financial industries. The now defunct Mutual Life Insurance Company and Life of Jamaica (Sagicor) had followed Pan Jam’s lead into real estate development, and began to expand New Kingston and its environs with high-rise office complexes. By this move they had become competitors — and formidable ones to boot — with the resources and will to threaten Pan Jam’s dominance in Kingston’s corporate rental market.

Pan Jam, apparently alarmed at this development, responded to what it must have viewed as an uninvited encroachment on its territory, by returning the favour.

First Life was a modest player within the insurance market. But it provided Pan Jam with enough of a platform to break into this industry. Acquisition came by way of share swap between First Life and Jamaica Property.

In 1981, Pan Jamaican partnered with another group of investors to raise enough capital and bring the requisite expertise to the table to form a merchant bank — Pan Caribbean. Over the next several years, Pan Caribbean Merchant Bank (now PanCaribbean Bank) and First Life would lead the charge through a series of bold mergers and acquisitions that ultimately led to a fundamental reshaping of the financial industry.

In-between the series of dramas within the financial industry, Pan Jamaican was busy trying to earn hard currency. The company says its investments in horticulture, agriculture and tourism were in part a nod to patriotism — a response to the clarion call of the Government of the day for big capital to seek export earning opportunities.

Not all the initiatives immediately bore fruit. For example, the company’s flirtation with tourism did not produce the propitious financial outcome it had anticipated. It quickly found a buyer for the Sans Souci property, just outside Ocho Rios, that it had acquired and converted into a hotel.

Pan Jam also backed out of growing flowers, and spread its risks in entities like Busha Browne’s Company Ltd, and Scott’s Preserves Ltd — processors of spices.

Today, agriculture in fact forms part of the portfolio of the Pan Jam group. For example, it reported that it earned last year, $12 million as its share of profit from Walkers Wood Group, and that its Busha Browne and Jamaica Joe brands of spices were gaining traction within overseas markets.

Late last year, this company partnered with the Jamaica Producers Group to acquire the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory Ltd, the manufacturer of one of Jamaica’s most outstanding brands of coffee — Jablum.

Pan Jam maintains a 20 per cent stake in Hardware & Lumber.

Yet a review of the conglomerate’s financial statement leaves no doubt as to what it is at its core, and what constitute its main revenue drivers.

At the end of 2011 it had total assets of $15.9 billion and stockholder equity of $14.6 billion. Net profit for the year was $1.7 billion and pre-tax profit $2.1 billion. The roughly 700,000 square feet of office space that it owns, manages and rents produced income of $1.37 billion. This segment of the business contributed $646 million to pre-tax profit — aided by revaluation gains.

Pan Jamaican is a 25 per cent shareholder in the Barbados-owned insurance company, Sagicor Jamaica, which is itself an 85 per cent owner of Pan Caribbean Financial Services Ltd. Sagicor made $5.52 billion last year.

That Pan Jamaican Investment Trust could end up being the largest local shareholder (25 per cent) in one of the most profitable publicly listed companies on the local exchange is a lesson in leveraging and strategic partnering.

PanCaribbean Merchant Bank, with its modest beginnings in 1981, grew organically during its first decade of operation, but aggressively shifted gears during the 1990s. The bank went on an acquisition binge, gobbling up just about any firm it could digest and that was willing to sell.

The merchant bank presented a compelling balance sheet by 2004 when Pan Jam began talking with LOJ about some kind of merger.

In the end, Pan Jam traded in its majority shareholding in the merchant bank as well as in First Life insurance company for a 25 per cent stake in LOJ. The large insurer had itself been acquired by the Barbados-based Sagicor.

Last year, Pan Jam was a 25 per cent claimant on the $5.5 billion net profit made by Sagicor.

Moses Jackson is the founder and convenor of the Jamaica Observer annual Business Leader Award programme. He may be reached at moseshbsjackson@yahoo.com