New 'Curry' coming soon
Published:Wednesday | September 29, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Dionne Rose, Business Reporter
A $100-million repair of a burnt-out section of the Coronation Market, financed by the telecoms provider Digicel, will be completed by year-end.
But that will only be the first phase of a half-a-billion-dollar project to upgrade the market into a modern facility, as part of new efforts to breathe life into the gritty, and often crime-plagued downtown section of the Jamaican capital.
Coronation Market is next door to Tivoli Gardens, the enclave that used to be in the grip of Christopher 'Dudus' Coke, the west Kingston 'don' now awaiting trial in the United States on narcotics and gun-smuggling charges, whose extradition the Jamaican government resisted for nearly a year.
When the government finally relented in May, persons loyal to Coke fought against the security forces in an unrest that left more than 70 persons dead and the Coronation Market - an important economic hub and cultural landmark - was badly damaged.
Digicel's owner, Dennis O'Brien, who had already committed to move his company's corporate headquarters downtown, on the Kingston waterfront, undertook to finance this phase of the repair and expansion of the market.
"Our vision is to ensure that Jamaicans, and visitors alike, will be able to use the market to its fullest potential as the region's premier and largest open air market," Jacqueline Burrell-Clarke, Digicel's public relations manager, told Wednesday Business.
Replacements
This phase of the project will include replacing the approximately 8,200 square metres roof, repair or replace all fire damaged structural steel members and install a new floor.
"We are also building new shops and new stalls for the vendors," she said in an email response to questions.
But Digicel's efforts will not be end of the upgrading of the market, a project that has been on and mostly off for nearly three decades. The government's Urban Development Corporation (UDC) will spend another $400 million on the project.
In the 1980s, the administration of Edward Seaga began an upgrade of the Coronation Market and the wider market district in his then West Kingston parliamentary constituency.
The project stalled in the 1990s as urban blight and crime took a firm grip of downtown and many businesses, with several govern-ment agencies in tow, headed for uptown, particularly the capital's New Kingston region.
In the late 1990s, the P.J. Patterson administration launched a public-private sector effort for the renewal of the downtown area, and a handful of firms put capital in an entity to spearhead the drive. That effort, however, has merely sputtered.
Now, the administration of Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who inherited Seaga's west Kingston constituency, is making renewed efforts at the revival of downtown. And Coronation Market, along with Digicel's planned move downtown, it is hoped, will be something of a catalyst.
According to Joy Douglas, the general manager of the UDC, her agency will work with Digicel to create a modern concrete structure.
In addition to the current ground floor commercial use, the upper floor will be used for either market department offices or an after-school centre for children of the market vendors, or both.
Additionally, lands to the south of the main building, currently an open market and push-cart storage and car parking area, will also be upgraded.
"Digicel is concentrating on the upgrading of the vending areas directly to the south of the main building and which comprise 'Cabbage and Yam Ground' and 'Spur Line', where in past times, the railway had extended," she said.
The former main station of the now defunct Jamaica Railway Corporation (JRC) is just south of Coronation Market.
"UDC will concentrate on the rebuilding of the existing south-west open market and the new car park and cart storage area,"added Douglas.
Relocation
This work will facilitate the relocation of vendors who operate in areas outside the market.
"Those areas may then be restored to their original intended use by the UDC," she said
Douglas added: "In addition to these improvements in vending accommodation, an appropriate waste management system including a number of depots with skips and 'transfer stations' and allowing for separation of organic waste for composting is to be implemented by the UDC, NSWMA and KSAC in a partnership."