Morant Bay Urban Centre to Feature Four-Storey Medical Block and Modern Courthouse

A four-storey medical block and modern courthouse are among the buildings that will line the landscape of the highly anticipated Morant Bay Urban Centre in St. Thomas.

Factories Corporation of Jamaica (FCJ) Chairman, Lyttleton Shirley, confidently declared that “you’re going to be having the most modern courthouse to be built in Jamaica and, by extension, the Caribbean… five [courtrooms] operating concurrently”.

“It is a beauty. It stands for justice, and it was strategically designed by the Ministry of Justice,” he added.

Mr. Shirley was speaking with journalists after leading a tour of the Centre on Thursday (January 30) by a party comprising British High Commissioner to Jamaica, Her Excellency Judith Slater, and several local stakeholder interests.

The Chairman showed High Commissioner Slater the courthouse’s wheelchair access, underground parking with designated spaces for judges and other parties as well as its own entrance to the property.

Mr. Shirley commended Chief Justice, Hon. Bryan Sykes, who he said, “worked diligently with us to ensure that those standards are in the design concept”.

Meanwhile, the Chairman advised that on completion of the medical block, users of the Morant Bay Urban Centre will be able to access a wide range of healthcare services in one space.

“We have had… over 40 different medical practitioners wanting space in the Morant Bay Urban Centre. We recognised that… all of them were essential to individuals’ health [and] you would not want to leave out any because they all are specific, from dialysis to ultrasound and the various [other] medical services. So we decided that what is best to facilitate [them] is to build a medical block,” Mr. Shirley said.

According to the latest FCJ update, the Morant Bay Urban Centre project is slated for completion by March 2025.