PRIME Minister P J Patterson said yesterday that the decision to relocate the police headquarters to downtown Kingston was a sign of a declaration of war to criminals and catalyst for businesses to move back to the old section of the city.

Patterson, however, declared no policy position on government offices heading back downtown, from where several have scrambled in recent years, to high-cost accommodations in the New Kingston area, while the government agency, the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), has more than 100,000 square feet of empty office space downtown.

The police headquarters is located on Old Hope Road, in the Gold Triangle Area in the north of the capital. But Patterson, at a Cabinet retreat at the weekend, formally announced that it will be relocated to the old Jamintel building on Duke Street.

“We are doing it not only because we feel the site is a suitable one, centrally located, but really it is a sign, and a clear signal, that we intend to restore law and order in the heart of our capital city,” the prime minister told reporters at a briefing after the weekly meeting of the Cabinet.

“. The message we want to send to all the criminal elements that surround that vicinity is move out quickly, because the police are moving in soon,” he said.

The proposed police headquarters, which used to house Jamaica’s international telecommunications facilities when Cable & Wireless held a monopoly over that aspect of the telecoms business, is a mere three hundred metres from the island’s Parliament. But it is also surrounded by several inner-city communities with high levels of crime.

Such urban decay, however, is not confined to the immediate vicinity of the facility, but is common in vast swathes of downtown, despite the renewal efforts of the private sector-promoted Kingston Restoration Company.

The government has offered tax credits for people who invest in property in downtown Kingston. Instead, businesses have largely fled downtown – and so, too, has the government.

In fact, two articles published in the Business Observer in October and November, pointed to how government entities, having left premises downtown, paid high rentals for offices uptown, sometimes even higher than private sector firms.

For instance, the national security ministry, under which the police falls, used to be housed at the UDC building on Ocean Boulevard, just across from the Kingston Harbour seawall.

But the ministry and the Attorney General’s chambers moved uptown to the Michael Lee Chin-owned NCB Towers, at a cost to taxpayers of about $60 million a year.

Another government agency, the Export-Import Bank has budgeted more than $100 million to buy a headquarters uptown, following other government agencies that have made similar treks.

Patterson was asked yesterday whether he had also weighed the impact on the large number of public offices and commercial businesses which were moving out of the city for fear of crime.

According to the prime minister, that was one of the factors which influenced the Cabinet in making its decision to relocate the police headquarters.

“The Cabinet was of the view that not only was it a good thing to have the headquarters centralised, but that it was a symbol, a declaration of war against the criminal elements in the surroundings, that we are establishing the police high command presence in that area,” he said.

Patterson confirmed that the National Housing Trust (NHT) would acquire the police’s Old Hope Road property for housing development. He did not disclose the purchase fee but said the money would be used to purchase the former Jamintel building, situated at the corner of Duke and North streets. He was confident that there would be no additional requirement of the budget for the purchase and/or renovation of the property.

“There has been work on that for some time now,” Patterson said. “Engineers, architects have been looking at what changes are necessary.”

He said that the preparatory work was needed to be completed within four weeks, during which final costs for renovations would be determined.

Among the things to be accomplished at the new building will special parking to ensure the mobility of the police and some form of protective barrier in the vicinity of the building.

“When that is completed we will go ahead with transfers from the different locations to the new HQ building,” he said.

Patterson did not say how long it would take for this work to be done, but other sources said it would require several months.