The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade building is part of the redevelopment of downtown Kingston. (Gleaner file photo)
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Christopher Whyms Stone, Deputy Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Authority
The Town and Country Planning Authority (TCPA) is rubbishing suggestions that the redevelopment of downtown Kingston has halted.
Christopher Whyms Stone, the deputy chairman of the authority, says the process has been ongoing, albeit slowly.
He says projects are being continuously approved.
The Gleaner recently reported that a coalition of deep-pocketed investors has pulled out of a multi-billion-dollar commercial project that was targeted as the axis of the redevelopment of downtown Kingston.
Glen Christian, chairman of an investment task force dubbed The Shoreline Group, complained that after nine years, a lack of political will and an absence of synergy with government agencies had frustrated efforts to get the project off the ground.
But Mr. Whyms Stone said there are other challenges hindering the redevelopment plans, such as the physical infrastructure.
"I am both talking about what you see above ground in terms of the buildings and so forth, but also the stuff underground like the sewage networks and things like that. They're old and need to be replaced so that development can happen easier," he suggested.
Mr. Whyms added that social constraints like the government's lack of economic power as well as the socio-economic conditions of the people who live in downtown Kingston are also slowing down the redevelopment plans.
"There is a real challenge to let things happen quickly because a large percentage of the population lives in the downtown core and a large percentage of the financially challenged people live in the downtown core. So these are the constraints that make development, not impossible...but difficult," he noted while speaking Monday on TVJ's Smile Jamaica programme.
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