I submit for reference and publication the history of the Kingston Waterfront and Ocho Rios Development both initiated by me. My reasons are as follows:

The largest projects which have been done by the Government of Jamaica since Independence have been the development of the waterfronts of Kingston and Ocho Rios.

Kingston Waterfront

The Kingston Waterfront Development has had a considerable impact on commerce and finance in Jamaica. The original port for trade in imports and exports was the waterfront of Kingston which operated ugly, rotting, wooden finger piers jutting out into the harbour. This configuration was not only unsightly but inefficient. It did not allow for the operator of new technology — the ro-ro (roll on-roll off) large cranes — to lift the cargo off the ships. This expedited the discharge of cargo.

In 1964 I was minister of development. Moses Matalon came to see me with a number of prominent businessmen who were owners of different shipping companies. At that time, the Matalon group was in the course of dredging the waterfront in the western end of the harbour to create an industrial estate which would be called Newport West.

The Government was entitled to select 20 per cent of the new land created. I was approached by them to make land available at Newport West to accommodate the berthing of many ships at a time, allowing for the ro-ro to unload them one after the other efficiently. The ship owners wanted to swap their existing waterfront land in the city for some of the land in Newport West to be transferred to Government. This would enable them to consolidate ownership and operation of a far more efficient port facility.

I was thrilled by the idea and my mind started to configure the possibilities for development of the waterfront, of this central block of land in the centre of commercial Kingston.

The project for development was planned as a series of high-rise 12-storey buildings for commercial and residential purposes. At that time it was also proposed to remove the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ), which was located on King Street where the Supreme Court now operates, to some other area. I told the BOJ that I wanted to re-site the bank at the waterfront in the new scheme. This was promptly accepted. The entire project of 12-storey high-rise buildings and the BOJ was completed in three to four years. Space was left which we sold to the Intercontinental Hotel and the Bank of Nova Scotia to develop their own headquarters.

At this point I established the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) to carry out the project since no private investment group would have been able to handle this huge project.

To do this development, we cleared Port Royal Street where the shipping companies operated and dredged new land in front of it to provide the development area. Some 60 acres of cleared land were now available.

The scheme was a success welcomed by all, until nearby acts of violence in the 1972 election caused King Street shop owners to relocate uptown. A new set of shop owners with lower-quality goods, aimed at creating a different market in the area which facilitated for bargain shopping, took over the location. This is where the project now stands, operating a new and active market for trading.

UDC would then be in a position to sell or rent the buildings, office or commercial space and apartments to the private sector. The buildings now give the harbour front a spectacular high profile of a high rise landscape. In the meantime, two more 12-storey buildings are under construction and a further two buildings are planned, all with the same high-rise construction.

Ocho Rios

The Ocho Rios development had a fairy-tale beginning.

In February 1967, while on my way to a political rally on the north coast in Ocho Rios, it occurred to me, as I thought about a topic for my speech, that the Ocho Rios Bay could be a good prospect for reclamation to create a large beach for development.

At that time the bay had a thin strip of land a few feet wide on the waterfront sparsely covered with sand. It was used by fishermen to beach their canoes. I threw out the idea of an expanded beach at the meeting and promised to pursue it. The idea found great favour. Exactly one year later, work was completed on the reclamation and there was an expansive 80-acre beach with prime granular white sand dredged from beyond the barrier reef which protected the bay. It was called Turtle Beach.

The newly established UDC would also be the perfect vehicle to undertake this new waterfront development of Ocho Rios.

With a loan of £250,000, which Government had provided to buy the existing waterfront land, the Commonwealth Development Corporation of the United Kingdom provided the £700,000 for development. The reclamation was carried out and the 80 acres of beach created in one year with excellent white sand ready for development. This was vested in the UDC.

It was zoned for the development of hotels, a shopping complex and resort apartments. Using the land as equity, it was possible to secure a 20 per cent interest for the UDC as a joint venture partner in the ownership of each hotel constructed. Two partners were readily found. These were the Hyatt Hotels and Intercontinental Hotels. Simultaneously, an apartment complex of four towers of 12 floors each was constructed at the other end of the beach, largely for Kingstonians and those who wanted resort locations for holidays and weekends.

This project was fully owned and operated by the UDC. Most apartments were sold or rented to recover investment costs; others were retained for profitability. Jamaicans readily responded. The overall venture, particularly with other hotels and additional apartments built in later years to fill out the beach, was a most successful development.

Finally, a cruise ship dock was added to the beach to bring visitors to Jamaica. Ocho Rios became the cruise capital of Jamaica.

Plans by private developers for the development of other hotels to the east and west of the town of Ocho Rios, and the upgrading of a few earlier hotels, fell into place.

So far the focus was on building accommodation capacity. Attractions for visitors to enhance the area got a big boost as a result of an unrelated discussion. As lovely as the new Ocho Rios Bay was, ringed by hotels and apartments, there was a big eyesore which defaced the area. It was the Reynolds silos for storage of the bauxite to be exported. The tall, imposing silos were covered with unsightly red bauxite dust. It would be most difficult to hide this scar because of the size of the installation. But I had an alternative plan.

I asked Richard Reynolds, chairman of Reynolds Metals, the parent company of the local subsidiary Reynolds Jamaica Mines Limited, to come see me. He responded, accompanied by the financial controller of Reynolds. I posed the problem to him. He knew that it would be an overwhelming operation to downplay the massive installation. I insisted that it was defacing the development in the bay. This line of argument went on for a while until, in exasperation, he turned to his financial controller with a stern admonition: “I told you,” he said, “when we came here we should have bought the whole town.”

I played my card then. “Well, if you can’t deal with the silos, sell us the Belmont property.” Belmont was a large property nearby the Ocho Rios development area through which the prime attraction of Jamaica, and arguably the Caribbean, the Dunn’s River, flowed. It was a huge multi-layered waterfall owned by Reynolds Mines and operated on a semi-private basis. Visitors delighted in climbing the falls. It was needed to enhance the attractions of the Ocho Rios area to more fully develop the tourism product.

Since it was one or the other, he agreed to the sale of Belmont, which had little commercial prospects for Reynolds as a mining company, but was one of the most valuable scenic properties in Jamaica for tourism development. Belmont was purchased and vested in the UDC. It enhanced its position as the stellar attraction of Jamaica and, indeed, is internationally recognised and featured widely on tours and in magazines. Cruise ships, particularly, welcomed its availability.

I insisted that both Turtle Beach and Dunn’s River be opened to the public in order to provide access to Jamaicans and visitors.

The cruise ship industry was not yet the dominant player that it is now. But Turtle Beach provided an ideal location for a cruise ship pier which was established later and further extended to accommodate two mega-liners at one time. So were a marina and two more multi-storey sets of apartments constructed.

Cruise ships added considerable activity to the tourism product of Jamaica, with Ocho Rios being, by far, the largest cruise ship destination in the island. The thousands of cruise ship passengers, who visited weekly, caused a mushrooming demand for craft work, in-bond merchandising, and transportation to and from the ship to tour the attractions. Turtle Beach eventually became the largest tourism complex in Jamaica.

The UDC redesigned and constructed the centre of the town of Ocho Rios. It provided a new shopping centre strategically located to serve visitors and local residents, a craft market which catered to the craft industry largely for visitors, and eventually a bypass road to avoid the old town commercial area. Since then, beautification of public space has given Ocho Rios a very picturesque look, all except for the main street through the older part of the town, which is still in a state of some dilapidation.

The impact on employment in the Ocho Rios area was substantial, both for temporary construction work and permanent jobs. Indeed, it became necessary in the 1980s, as expansion continued, to establish through the newly introduced HEART training programme an academy in a converted small hotel and country club nearby, overlooking the golf course, to train young people for the industry. It was a huge success with virtually all graduates finding early employment, many before they graduated.

Over the years the dynamic Ocho Rios development also brought problems, chief among them was accommodation for workers. The influx of staff for management and administrative positions also created a surge of demand for housing. This was greatly relieved when I gave instructions to the UDC to purchase the Mansfield lands in the centre of the town. Housing schemes were established on these lands on both sides of the main road entering Ocho Rios from Fern Gully. But over the years thousands of other job seekers and hustlers seeking any possible opportunity for employment flooded the Ocho Rios area. They squatted on prime lands, private and public, and built shacks. This became one of the largest squatting locations in rural Jamaica, creating a serious problem yet to be meaningfully resolved.

The outflow of water in the town became polluted with nitrites from waste water which entered the bay, producing an environment for the unfavourable growth of sea grass and algae in the bathing area, attacking coral life on the reefs and endangering their existence. This had to be cleared from time to time.

Ocho Rios has nevertheless continued to grow in the period since it evolved from a small town to a tourism destination. It has been the driver of change in the area, but deficiencies still remain in the infrastructure despite schemes providing water and sewage disposal. These will be even more evident as the new coastal highway more fully opens the corridors of transportation of goods and people into the congestion of the small, original central commercial area.

Ocho Rios has a strong resource base for continued expansion as long as capacity planning and environmental regulations are introduced and implemented, adhering to the principles of sustained development.

From an ad hoc remark at a political rally concerning an almost non-existent beachfront, a prosperous development evolved as a prime player in the tourism industry, stimulating the wider area of Ocho Rios to become the principal foreign exchange earner in tourism for the Jamaican economy. This transformation was driven by a vision, a plan, the dynamism of tourism as the agent of change, and the excellent work of the UDC in implementing this project.

Two photos accompany this submission to show what has been developed from nothing. Understandably, I considered the two developments, of Kingston and Ocho Rios, to be among my very best of the 126 policies, programmes and projects I created in my active years of government.

I have always wanted to link the Kingston and Ocho Rios projects by a highway corridor to create a large dove-tailed development with an easy movement between the two by day and night to enhance business and pleasure. The time has now come to link both developments with the North-South Highway. As I have been so deeply instrumental in the conceptual and implementation work, I wanted the highway to bear my name.

I have devoted my life from the age of 29 years to the development of Jamaica and have never been given the recognition for the considerable creativity and effort I have invested. The only return I want is acknowledgement of my projects to allow them to be a part of the legacy I will leave to the country.

My gratitude to the Chinese development company, CHEC, to make it possible for the change of name to take place.

— Edward Seaga is a former prime minister of Jamaica, the chancellor of the University of Technology, Jamaica and is a distinguished fellow at The University of the West Indies.