CONGLOMERATE GraceKennedy Limited yesterday officially unveiled its corporate headquarters in downtown Kingston, which came in at a price tag of $3.25 billion, and giving a major boost to downtown Kingston which for years suffered from urban blight.

The building, which for the first time hosted members of the public for GraceKennedy’s annual general meeting yesterday afternoon, later hosted a number of specially invited guests, including Prime Minister Andrew Holness, for the official opening ceremony.

Located at 42 to 56 Harbour Street in Kingston, the new GraceKennedy building has 10 floors and covers 192,000 square feet. The facility brings together the Group’s Executive Office, the GK Financial Group Divisional Office and the GK Money Services Group, comprising the Western Union, Bill Express and FX Trader brands.

It currently houses boardrooms, a training facility, an innovation lab, an 11-level parking garage with 400 spaces, and a gym.

GraceKennedy’s retail centre includes a Hi-Lo Express and a GKOne entity, but plans are underway to set up retail spaces for non-GK entities later this year.

The company was also keen on implementing renewable resource systems in the building’s design.

“The building’s green elements include solar panels that serve 30 per cent of the energy needs and a rain water system in place which can store up to 75,000 gallons of water,” CEO Don Wehby told shareholders.

GraceKennedy’s new corporate office was constructed by China Sinopharm International Corporation (CSIC) after an analysis of the four bids submitted — two from local and two from overseas service providers — revealed that CSIC was within two per cent of the estimate of the construction cost, as assessed by local chartered quantity surveyors Berkeley & Spence in September 2016.

The contract was signed between GraceKennedy and CSIC on February 10, 2017 and work began on March 1. The building had an expected completion date of November 2018.

Despite the controversy surrounding the decision to select CSIC as the main contractor, Wehby noted that roughly 150 Jamaicans were employed from the surrounding communities to assist in constructing the new corporate headquarters which sits across from GraceKennedy’s previous headquarters at 73 Harbour Street.

GraceKennedy also capitalised on urban renewal tax benefits for companies constructing in the downtown Kingston area. Among them are an investment tax credit of 33.3 per cent on capital sums invested, tax-free rental income, exemption from transfer tax and stamp duty, and tax-free urban renewal bonds.

“We were able to remove some of our subsidiaries as well the central office for the overall financial group to downtown Kingston. They were previously occupying high rental spaces in the New Kingston so we are saving some money by bringing them downtown in a combined setting,” Group Chief Financial Officer Andrew Messado told shareholders yesterday.

“In 2017 we got tax benefits of $416 million and in 2018 $428 million, as part of the cost of the construction we get a third of that as a return in the form of tax credits,” he continued.

According to Messado, GraceKennedy was also able to access lower funding costs under the Urban Renewal Act, and will also be renting out some retail space on the ground floor to earn additional income.