THE Ministry of Water and Housing on Thursday entered into a joint agreement with WAW Developers Ltd to provide a $240-M housing development in Cambridge, St James.

The lending agency is the Jamaica Mortgage Bank. The Cambridge Meadows development, which will consist of 109 two bedroom housing units, 111 commercial lots, the requisite infrastructure and areas for community use, is expected to take 15 months to complete.

At the contract signing, Housing Minister Karl Blythe stressed the need for the project to be completed on time and within budget. He also urged the contractors to keep the unit costs at the original estimates of about $2M per home and $500,000 per lot.

And in response to the massive demand for housing in the Cambridge area, Member of Parliament Derrick Kellier said that he was trying to source an additional 70 acres of nearby land to expand the planned development. “Over 300 applications have already been made and the scheme is already oversubscribed as we only have 109 lots on which to build,” he remarked.

He said he was currently in discussions with the Coffee Board and the Ministry of Agriculture for the release of an additional 70 acres of land adjoining the property, and bordering the Great River. “We’ve asked them to look at this in the near future so we can expand the scheme and create a new town for Cambridge,” Kellier said.

He further claimed that he wanted to regularise the squatter settlement that has occupied 30 acres of land in the community since 1970. “I’m sure we would be able to work out something in the short run,” he said, adding that because the settlement was already equipped with utilities, this would make for easy development.