The Pinnacle | Tower One Topping Out Ceremony Bogue Reading Peninsula
Keynote Address
by
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness, ON, PC, MP,
Prime Minister of Jamaica
at
The Pinnacle; Tower One Topping Out Ceremony
Bogue Reading Peninsula, Montego Bay
On
December 10, 2025
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Let me acknowledge the Ministers of the Cabinet who are here.
Mr Ziping Chen, Chairman of LCH Developments Ltd
Yangsen Li speaks English with a Jamaican accent
The team from LCH and Pinnacle
Members of the public and private sector who are here
Members of the media,
It is indeed a good morning.
Today’s ceremony is a declaration that even after the strongest storm to make landfall in living history, Jamaica’s momentum cannot be derailed, and that’s why I am here this morning to highlight a significant milestone in this project, but to also demonstrate to the world that Jamaica is open for business.
It was such a pleasing sight to see cruise ships back in the pier; to see the hustle and bustle- that’s just a euphemism for traffic in Montego Bay, and to see the city coming back to life and indeed to see the workers from the Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) cleaning up the elegant corridor as I came in. There is a great attempt to return to normalcy, and I’m very heartened by that and I want to commend the parish council, the municipal authority, the mayor and his team, and commend all the businesses for getting back up very quickly and restarting production and service delivery in your city. Again, I commend you and I encourage you.
This morning, however, permit me to share a few thoughts with you as we mark this significant achievement of reaching the final floor in the first tower, and that’s the 28th floor. I hear a boast that this is the tallest building in the English-speaking Caribbean, only for a few months because there are several other buildings in the works that are going to surpass your towers, Yangsen, so you better start thinking of some taller ones but allow me to share a few thoughts with you.
The notion is that this is going to become the heights of luxury. It is Jamaica’s entry into a new segment of the tourism market, which is luxury and lifestyle, and we welcome that. We want to diversify our product, and this is important, but as Prime Minister for everyone, particularly in a time of disaster, we acknowledge the sensitivity that we can’t be celebrating luxury when there are thousands of households without roofs. So, as I stand here celebrating this achievement, I want the rest of Jamaica that is without a roof to understand that they are not forgotten, and that every hour of my day is spent trying to figure out how to get you those roofs quickly, effectively, in an affordable way, and in a sustainable way.
As remote as it may seem, this is also a part of the effort. Pursuing this is not to the exclusion of pursuing roofs for persons who don’t have and there may be those who will try to divide the country into those who have and those who don’t. My job is to bring the country together so that we can all have. It is not an easy task, but it is the only way for us to all progress as one people.
The diversification of the tourism product is absolutely important, but it can’t be done in isolation. Unfortunately, we have developed tourism almost as a silo cut off from the rest of the economy, but tourism itself has developed in silos. Hotels have developed without housing for workers. Hotels have developed without proper plans for sewage and water. Hotels have developed without proper plans for expanding the airports and the highways, and we have developed the all-inclusive concept that because the rest of Jamaica isn’t moving along in pace, let’s create a kind of colony where the services can be delivered. That model cannot take us further than it has taken us. We have to pursue a genuinely all-inclusive model where all sectors of the economy are connected into tourism. It’s the only way, which goes back to my original point that we must bring everybody together.
I’m celebrating this, but I’m using the opportunity to remind the public or to make the public aware that the Government of Jamaica through the New Social Housing Programme made an allocation along with the Tourism Enhancement Fund to pursue housing for tourism workers. Yes, the funds that have been allocated may have to be repurposed given the immediate need for restoration and emergency shelter, but I want it to be in the consciousness of the public that the government is going to be instrumental, deliberate in terms of its housing policy to provide housing opportunities for persons working in the tourism sector and we started that by insisting that all new developments must have a housing component to it.
You would’ve seen that some of the newer tourism products that are coming on the market, they have either dormitories or they have built units and those that are being constructed now, all of them have either building out units for workers to acquire or to live-in in a rent mode facility, or dormitories are being built because tourism is considered a driver of the economy, and for many years we have been talking about linkages into tourism, but the concept of the linkages would be how do you link tourism to the supply chain that goes in. Meaning how do we link it to agriculture, for example, how do we link it to manufacturing, but we must now expand it. How do we link it to the welfare and wellbeing of the workers and housing is a critical linkage for tourism.
Now, I know the group that is behind this are very skilled contractors and that they do excellent work. This tower would’ve risen up in under a year. If you can do this, you can build thousands of low-income houses as well, and therefore, I use this platform to challenge you and to say the Government of Jamaica is willing to partner with you if you were to put some of your construction skills into providing low-income housing, which is absolutely necessary at this time given the destruction brought by Hurricane Melissa so come and talk to me after that as we enter into the reconstruction phase, I need contractors who can operate at scale and at pace. That’s how we’re going to bring the entire Jamaica together. That’s how luxury is going to help to bring people out of poverty, the intersection of our interests.
I also want to use this opportunity to talk about our environment. I know that this project has had its fair share of skepticism as it relates to the environment. I had long discussions with NEPA to ensure that everything that is being done here was sustainable and that it would enhance the value of what is being developed in the city of Montego Bay, but that it will also protect, preserve, and enhance our environmental assets because at the end of the day, the mystique and aura around Montego Bay, it is not high-rise buildings and skyscrapers. It is, as Mr. Bartlet said, it’s sun, sea, sand and there are some other S’s to be added. I don’t know what you are thinking, but I was thinking seamlessness, safety, security and we must preserve that.
Yes, we must in improve and enhance the quality of our buildings. We must bring them into modern times. We must give great facades. We must bring them out of the 60s and 50s and build them forward and future proof them, and therefore, I endorse this. I admire this. I like this because it is projecting Jamaica into the future, but we’re not going to leave behind the core of who we are, the natural assets that define us, but more importantly distinguishes us.
You don’t want the tourists to come here and say I feel like I’m in Manhattan. Nobody is going to take a plane from Manhattan to come to Manhattan. You want to be in Jamaica so we must preserve the things that make us distinctly Jamaican. I say very quickly, however, that there are some things that make us Jamaicans that we must dispense with such as ensuring that our streets are clean, ensuring that our frontage is well kept and in a tourism environment. And as I was driving through, you could see that some people are trying to keep their frontage looking beautiful and welcoming, and others are not. That’s a municipal matter to be addressed, and the mayor isn’t here.
Please tell him that I was talking about him behind his back that we need to pay attention to the frontage of the properties, whether they’re private or public, because you are selling a unified product, so you can’t have a hotel here looking very lovely and then two doors down there is another property where it’s just chaos. That’s a part of what is becoming Jamaican “chaka chaka”, which we need to remove from our culture and experience. The tourism product does require a certain level of order. Not to be totally sanitized, but there must be a certain order and seamlessness about the product that ensures that there is a standard where everyone can articulate and that’s what we would want to do. And I see the effort being made by the LCH group to ensure that their properties that they develop, and especially this one, meets that standard of orderliness and seamlessness.
Finally, I had occasion to reflect on 2017 which seemed so long ago, so far away, and the need to declare a state of public emergency. Some of you’re looking like what is happening. What 2017? In 2017 Montego Bay recorded probably its highest murder rate where I believe Montego Bay went up to more than 200 murders, maybe as many as 300 and we had to declare a state of public emergency. We reduced it by 70% and we managed to maintain it at below 150 for several years, and now we are 52 homicides.
I make the point to say that even though the challenges that we face may seem intractable, meaning you’ll never be able to surmount them and they’re just not going to go away, with good policies, careful thought, strategic thinking, good management, and enduring presence, you can have an impact and you can make a difference, and indeed you can transform.
Before your very eyes, we have transformed the public safety issue, criminal violence, organized crime in Montego Bay and St James. Before the eyes of the entire country, the murder rate has been cut this year by 42.5% as of yesterday. The year before it was cut by approximately 19%, and the year before it was cut by approximately 8% so we have moved our murder rate from being one of the highest in the region to now being amongst the lowest. We’re not at the lowest yet, Salvador has done a phenomenal job. They’re way down. We have moved from about 50 per 100,000. We’re about 25 per 100,000 now. We need to get down to below the regional average, which is about 15 per 100,000, that is the target so next year we’re not going to sit back and say we have achieved this wonderful thing. Next year we’re going to be pushing even harder to bring our homicide rate to below the regional average and I believe once we give the security guarantee, you’re not going to have space on the hip strip for tourists to walk. It’s the reality.
We believe we’re seeing a very high level of visitor arrivals, but the truth is we’re not even scratching the surface of our potential because the security concern does create some hesitancy in truly realizing our visitor potential. So, for a project like this to realize its true and full potential, and for the entire Montego Bay to realize the true and full potential, we must keep driving that murder rate down, we must ensure citizen security, and we must ensure public order. And so, I give you the assurance, my friends, that this administration will continue to push the agenda of citizen security, public order, and strategic infrastructure development to ensure that the potential of this great place of Montego Bay is fully realized.
So, with those musings, thoughts, and comments, I hope it has given you some different perspectives and a better understanding of what the government is doing. I thank you for your attention and again, commendations and congratulations to LCH and the Pinnacle team for reaching the goal of topping the first tower and I’m not expecting that you will be doing a tower per year, so that’s another three years before you finish. You should finish this within two years.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.