The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

DEVELOPERS behind a high-end “shopping village” near Baha Mar are expecting to break ground on the project this month, telling Tribune Business they are hoping for a possible “game changer” by concluding lease negotiations with two major franchises.

Charles Christie, C.A. Christie Real Estate’s chief executive, said “well over” 100 construction jobs would likely be created through the build-out of the $35 million Towers Shopping Centre. He predicted that 600 full-time retail and office jobs would be generated at full occupancy.

Disclosing that the project’s building plans were being modified to accommodate construction changes, Mr Christie said: “We have now moved from conventional construction and we’re going with steel. The building plans have been delayed three weeks or so until they make all of the changes to accommodate the steel structures. We are looking forward to breaking ground this month. We should start with the infrastructure this month.”

The Towers Shopping Centre, which will sit on 20 acres and feature about 64,000 square feet of retail and office space, will be located immediately to the east of Baha Mar Boulevard, which connects Cable Beach to John F. Kennedy Drive, overlooking Lake Cunningham.

“Location is key. We have designed the plaza so that most of the shops on the western side, you’re overlooking the lake. It’s just an absolutely super location and it has entrances from the roundabout on the eastern side of Tonique Williams-Darling Highway and JFK; you can enter from that roundabout and the roundabout on the Baha Mar gateway,” said Mr Christie.

Gavin Christie, partner with C.A. Christie, added: “Towers is surprising a lot of us. It’s doing fairly well. We have gotten a lot of interest. I think we’re possibly now anywhere between 40-50 per cent of hard reservations, of persons who have reserved units.

“There are two major franchises who have expressed interest in coming into the plaza. However, they need certain specifications for their franchises. We’re negotiating on how best to accommodate them. We’re still negotiating, but that should be wrapped up in the next four to six weeks. You have a 64,000 square foot shopping village, and on the outskirts we have number of parcels which are for sale now. Out of the seven out parcels, there are currently only two left. Those sold very quickly. The purpose of those out parcels is for commercial use that would service the shopping village.”

Gavin Christie added: “We have a credit union bank which has closed; that’s on one of the out parcels. We have a medical office that will be going there. We have a high-end health and wellness spa on one of the other parcels, which will bring a lot of traffic to the shopping village.

“There are two more out parcels that are available, which we are currently marketing now for entities that should be interested and want to be connected to the shopping village, and also the vicinity of Baha Mar.”

Gavin Christie said the out parcels were the first pieces of the development to be sold. “A lot of people have been looking for land, commercial property in the Cable Beach area, but there are not a lot of options out there. When we put our out parcels on the market we had an enormous response to that. The first five sold fairly quickly,” said Mr Christie.