- Rutolph BrownJennifer Messado and Martin Lee at the new Washington Boulevard Shopping compelx site.
Al Edwards, Business Co-ordinator
THE Lee family, who built a local supermarket empire over the last 50 years is aiming to unveil its new J$200 million shopping complex venture located on Washington Boulevard by Easter of this year.
Speaking to the Sunday Business, Martin Lee said: "Our business is supermarkets and we saw great potential here. There are no malls here and you have a lot of people heading to and from the country. We aim to provide a good service to people of both the Portmore and Spanish Town communities. We had hoped to have this complex ready by Christmas but that proved not to be the case and we will now be ready for Easter."
The shopping units which will include Courts, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a drive through Burger King, hardware store, travel service shops and medical surgeries, a bakery run by David McCrae, Island Grill, Woolworth's ,CIBC, Western Union (Grace, Kennedy Remittance Services), as well as Lee's Supermarket will sit on 150,000 square feet, with 120,000 comprising rental spaces. The family supermarket will be the jewel in the crown of this new project which has the unique distinction of being a totally local investment venture.
This latest enterprise by the Lee family will come under the watch of Martin Lee. The family business was started by Martin's grandfather Euctace Lee with a small corner grocery store in Cedar Valley, St. Thomas during the fifties before he began operating in Kingston some ten years later.
The family now operate, two supermarkets with the current flagship located on Red Hills Road. Recently the Lee family added a pharmacy to Lee's Food Fair with the expansion work coming in at approximately $90 million. Washington Boulevard will make the third store and will supersede the Red Hills Road outfit as its biggest operation. If all goes well, the Lee's will open a fourth supermarket in Portmore later this year at a cost of $100 million.
The new Washington Boulevard centre will have three entrances, Washington Boulevard, Ken Hill Drive and an entrance only-no exit, next to the National gas station and will serve as the Burger King Drive Through. An especial effort has been made to have as many parking spaces as possible and the complex has been designed with this in mind.
The Lee family was encouraged to enter into this venture by their attorney Jennifer Messado, one of the country's leading real estate lawyers who Martin Lee credits for seeing that the project took shape. The deal was put together by Property Consultants Limited. She added: "All the tenents were hand picked with a long term investment in mind. The lease agreement are five year renewables and hopefully they all will seek to extend that when the time comes. The developer is Boulevard Supercentre Limited and our bankers are NCB who have been most supportive with what you now see. Both Courts and KFC are open for business and doing well.
"The secret to a complex like this is to remain vibrant at night as well as during the day. You notice down town Kingston is practically a ghost town after five in the afternoon. We don't want that to happen here. Brian Morris of Plexus Limited who also designed Marketplace is the principal architect and he has risen and met the challenge of transforming the old Cifuentes tobacco factory into one of the most modern shopping complexes in Jamaica."
