By Al Edwards, Business Co-ordinator ON MONDAY of this week, the Lee family who own and run Red Hills' Lee's Food Fair officially opened its new J$250 million shopping complex venture located on Washington Boulevard.
The shopping units on site include Courts, Kentucky Fried Chicken, a drive through Burger King, Jamaica Plumbing, NCB, Lerner Department Store, medical surgeries, Patta Cake bakery run by David McCrae, Woolworths, Island Grill, and Western Union. The complex will also house Lee's Food Fair supermarket and Lee's Family Pharmacy. This Washington Boulevard shopping centre sits on 150,000 square feet of which 120,000 comprises of rental space. The complex will be run by Winston Lee. This new Washington Boulevard centre will have three entrances - Ken Hill Drive, an entrance only, next to the National gas station which will serve as the Burger King drive through and Washington Boulevard. A special effort has been made to have as many parking spaces as possible bearing in mind its strategic location.
Leading real estate attorney, Jennifer Messado, has been credited for encouraging the Lee family to enter into this latest venture and her contribution in seeing this project through has been considerable.
HAND PICKED
Speaking to Wednesday Business earlier this year, she said: "All the tenants were hand picked with a long term investment in mind. The lease agreements are five year renewable and hopefully they all will seek to extend that when the time comes. The developer is Boulevard Supercentre Limited and our bankers are NCB.
The Lee family business was started by Winston's grandfather Eustace 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.
Now with three supermarkets, the family has recently added a pharmacy to Lee's Food Fair in Red Hills Road at a cost of $90 million. The family has plans to open yet another supermarket in Portmore sometime next year at a cost of approximately $100 million.
