Montego Freeport ­ a PNP, JLP success story Shalman Scott

Shalman Scott, Contributor

The Montego Freeport Harbour, NOEL THOMPSON/ Freelance Photographer

It is indeed a story of bi-partisan success - a story also of private/public sector cooperation. It is one about effective co-management strategies and social synergy. Montego Freeport, a thought, like the size of a mustard seed has, flourished into a harvest of abundance.

It was a fabulous dream, 100 years ago, by a group of Montego Bay entrepreneurs - to build a modern pier in the bustling second city of Jamaica. A pier that would power and foster the continued growth and fast development of Montego Bay - and enhance the city's commercial, social and even political landscape.

It did not happen then in 1905. But the dream of such Montego Bay business stalwarts as the late Samuel Hart (Hart and Son Limited) and John Kerr (J.E Kerr. and Company Limited), did not die.

Their children's children carried the torch for the next several decades. And, in 1967, the grandiose Montego Bay Pier was formally opened in a blaze of glory, at a spanking, new place called Montego Freeport.

A futuristic development of prime resort, residential, commercial, Port and light industrial entities on a 350- acre primarily reclaimed peninsular and "Tiny Bogue Islands" site jutting into the Montego Bay harbour, just a mile west of the resort's city downtown area.

Today, Montego Freeport is considered the "new" Montego Bay, a jewel in the commercial, industrial and resort crown - of not only in Montego Bay - but the island on the whole.

Montego Freeport is busy. It's bustling, it's beautiful- and pretty important from many points of view.

Montego Bay Freeport is home to the crucial port of Montego Bay - always a beehive of activity, and handling a growing number of cruise ships and cargo vessels of varying sizes at its five berths.

Business benefits

It is home to the critical and growing Montego Freezone - a new form of free zone boom for overseas industrial and commercial investors, who are continually being invited by the Government of Jamaica to come and take advantage of some of the finest and most liberal business benefits anywhere in the world.

A place that sets the stage for a successful offshore business enterprise in such field s as tele-communication, data entry and conversion, resort reservation, tele-marketing, electronic assembly and manufacture, apparel manufacture, and wharehousing.

Many investors have accepted that invitation, have come down, have set up operations - and have been taking good advantage of the myriad cost-saving business benefits at a prime location in the one of the world's finest and most famous tourist resort destination.

Jamaica Dgi-port International Limited, a futuristic state-of-the-art digital centre and earth station is among the core players at the zone, and is central to the orientation of the zone, which is so successful that its acreage continues to expand daily, so to speak.

On the other side of business, Montego Freeport is home to the good life - resort and residential homes and condos abound, and the Montego Bay Yacht Club anchor at Freeport for decades, attracts some of the most famous names on the international yachting calendar for annual regatta and other outings.

The dream of a group of daring Montego Bay businessmen has come full circle, aided down through the years in a non-political fashion by some of the town's biggest names who are still alive today.

Samuel Hart's great-grandson is Tony Hart. Always debonair, cool, methodical, gregarious and generous.

It was Tony Hart who spearheaded the new generation of Montegonians and got Montego Freeport finally built, after several attempts failed after Samuel Hart's first go at it back then in 1905.

John Kerr died in 1917 at the Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston during negotiations aimed at establishing the Montego Bay Pier.

Still another aborted attempt was made in 1930 by the local Fletcher family of Fletcher and Company. They were also part owners of the Bogue Peninsular on which Montego Freeport now lies.

Tony Hart led the new team. He found several other players, both in the public and private sectors. In this, though, the public sector role was to have proven the most definitive and catalytic.

The Jamaica Labour Party Government, led by the late Alexander Bustamante and Donald Sangster and a team of its followers, developed Montego Freeport during the 1960s.

But the PNP Government, which took over the reins during the early 1970s did not blink when it was their time to see to its continued development.

And, at the present time, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson along with the ministerial team of Peter Phillips, Paul Robertson and Phillip Paulwell have demonstrated unquestionable commitment to even further development and as put Montego Freeport in active readiness to meet the demands of the 21st century.

And, so through decades of political twists and turns, both parties have fostered the development of Montego Freeport.

Montego Freeport therefore, is one of the best examples of political unity and a good signal of continuity to future investors.

The benefits of Montego Freeport to Jamaica in general are enormous. Like tourism, it contributes immensely to the national coffers.

Governor-General Sir Howard Cooke, a son of Montego Bay on the PNP side saw to Montego Freeport's development in more ways than one. His contribution to human resource development via skills training through the expansion of educational opportunities, is legendary.

Dr. Herbert Eldemire, former JLP Minister of Health whose vision built the Cornwall Regional Hospital, saw to Montego Freeport's development, in more ways than one.

For them both - and for so many others on that critical dividing line of Jamaica's political spectrum - Montego Freeport was not really a Montego Bay thing. It was something for all of Jamaica, something critical, something crucial, something that Jamaica had to have.

It just so happened that the Freeport was taking place in Montego Bay and not Kingston, which was already far advanced in respect of commercial and industrial development.

Back to News