St. Catherine, Jamaica — 21 February 2024
Sagicor Real Estate X Fund broke ground in February 2024 on a $8-billion mixed-use development at Portmore Promenade in the Greater Bernard Lodge area of St. Catherine, the latest project in a sprawling development corridor that is on track to deliver 15,000 new housing solutions alongside commercial, retail, and agricultural infrastructure. The aggregate value of all projects programmed for the Greater Bernard Lodge area exceeds J$19 billion, with all developments expected to have commenced construction by 2024 — a scale of investment that makes Bernard Lodge one of the most significant land development initiatives in Jamaica’s post-independence history.
The Portmore Promenade development — a 30-acre commercial centre anchored by restaurants, supermarkets, business process outsourcing operations, and pharmaceutical services — is designed to serve the population expected to inhabit the new residential communities being built across the Bernard Lodge plain. It represents a more integrated approach to large-scale housing development than Jamaica has historically attempted: not merely building houses, but simultaneously building the commercial and service infrastructure that makes those houses part of a functioning community rather than isolated residential estates.
The Scale of the Bernard Lodge Vision
The Greater Bernard Lodge development area sits on former agricultural land in St. Catherine, roughly between the Portmore causeway and Old Harbour, with access to the main highway corridor. The government-led development plan designates the area for residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural use in a framework that attempts to create a self-contained urban extension rather than a dormitory suburb. Fifteen thousand housing solutions at build-out represents a new town of significant scale — potentially housing 45,000 to 60,000 people when fully occupied, depending on average household size.
The Jamaica Urban Transit Company expanded its route network into the Bernard Lodge area in late 2024, introducing services to the Silver Sun Estate, Phoenix Park Village 1 and 2, and Old Harbour communities. Public transport access is a critical enabler of residential development at this scale: without bus connections to Kingston, Spanish Town, and Portmore employment centres, the Bernard Lodge communities would be accessible only to residents with private vehicles — excluding the lower-income NHT contributors who are the primary market for affordable housing solutions.
Sagicor’s Bet on Spanish Town
Sagicor’s $6-billion Spanish Town bet — a reference to earlier commitments in the St. Catherine market before the Portmore Promenade ground-breaking — has been paying off, according to the company’s reporting. The group’s real estate investment vehicle has been among the most active institutional real estate developers in Jamaica over the past five years, using the savings and pension assets it manages to invest in Jamaican property at a scale that individual private developers cannot match.
The Portmore Promenade commercial development is complementary to the residential programme: the retail and service tenants at Portmore Promenade will serve the households being established in the surrounding residential communities, while the residential demand base justifies the commercial investment. This commercial-residential integration, common in master-planned developments globally, is relatively rare in Jamaica, where residential and commercial development have historically proceeded independently.
“The Bernard Lodge development is the kind of large-scale, planned urbanisation that Jamaica has needed for decades,” said Dean Jones, Managing Director of Jamaica Homes. “Jamaica’s housing solutions have too often been built as isolated estates without the surrounding infrastructure — no shops, no transport, no jobs nearby. Bernard Lodge is attempting something more ambitious: building a real community, not just a residential project. If it delivers on its promise, it sets a template for how Jamaica should approach large-scale housing development going forward.”
Agricultural Integration
The Greater Bernard Lodge master plan includes an agricultural component — a recognition that not all the former cane land is optimally suited for residential or commercial development, and that food production proximity to a large residential population has economic and nutritional security value. The agricultural integration is also politically important: the conversion of productive cane land to residential use has been a point of tension, and the inclusion of agricultural programming in the Bernard Lodge plan signals an attempt to balance the competing uses of what is a large and potentially productive rural estate.
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