THE Digicel headquarters in downtown Kingston will be the greenest building in the Caribbean, the firm announced yesterday at an official ground-breaking ceremony.

“We will have three wind turbines on the roof of the 11-storey tower and we will have 15,000 square feet of solar panels on solar glass on the roof of all these buildings,” said Digicel Group principal shareholder and chairman Denis O’Brien yesterday at a press conference prior to the ground-breaking ceremony

The 210,000 square-foot property on the Kingston waterfront will house a 11-storey, 155,000 square-foot office tower; a 7,000 square-foot food court; and a 11,000 square-foot two-storey ancilliary buliding over a basement car park.

Scheduled to open in mid-2012, the massive building in downtown Kingstion will serve as the telecommunication provider’s global headquarters. O’Brien said that the investment represents a new stage of development in the firm’s operations in Jamaica.

“Since our inception here in Jamaica in 2001, we have spent approximately $72 billion and we hopefully have changed the technological landscape across the island,” said O’Brien.

“It is our commitment to Jamaica and the values that we have that we are trying to continue to increase and build on,” he added.

O’Brien said the goal of the initiative is to help “rejuvenate” the downtown Kingston area, which has been relatively neglected by business interests for decades. The Forbes billionaire said he hoped that the investment will spearhead a revival of downtown Kingston that can emulate development in his home country, Ireland, during the 1980s.

“We have seen first hand back in Ireland in the 1980s where the international financial service centre went on to employ 35,000 persons in the financial institutions in Dublin…We think the same can be done here,” said O’Brien.

Desmond McKenzie, mayor of Kingston and councillor of the Tivoli Garden division where the Digicel headquarters will be erected, described yesterday’s ground-breaking ceremony as a “dawn of a new day”.

“Downtown Kingston has come alive once again and we are moving forward in a positive way,” said the mayor, adding “Many many thanks to Digicel, continue to do what you are doing…the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation endorses and thanks Digicel for this vote of confidence.”

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, in his address, echoed McKenzie’s remarks.

“This kind of development and the level of investment that it represents would be a significant effort in any part of Jamaica, and the fact that that its in downtown Kingston, West Kingston, gives it even greater pleasure,” he said.

Opposition spokesman on Industry and Commerce, Phillip Paulwell, who is credited for guiding the liberalisation of the local telecommunications industry that brought Digicel to Jamaica when he was a government minister, said that Digicel has fulfilled a committment they made to him upon entering the local market.

“I was able to elicit from them that Jamaica would forever be the headquarter for Digicel…. Today is the full demonstration and a committment and fulfillment of that promise that Jamaica remains Digicel’s home,” noted Paulwell.