Even before construction began on the $3.7-billion One Belmont project in New Kingston, Sygnus was already seeing interest from several takers who in total wanted more than double its almost 80,000 square feet of commercial space. Not surprising, as the nine-storey building is impressive.

Despite being built during a pandemic that saw a 40 per cent spike in construction costs, strong project management ensured there was less than a year’s delay in completion and kept budget variance within single digits. For vice-president and head of real estate and project finance David Cummings, these are just some of the factors that have made Sygnus and its stakeholders dub One Belmont a success.

“Before we put the shovel in the ground, we actually had 170,000 square feet of interest in the building — before we actually started construction! So kudos to Anya [Kerr-Jarrett] and Richard [Oliver from Catalyst Realty Advisors],” he said.

Cummings was leading off a discussion about Jamaican success stories in real estate during the recent International Real Estate Conference and Expo 2024. One Belmont has now become a calling card for Sygnus Real Estate Finance and will likely be the standard to which future commercial space will be held.

In his overview of the project, Cummings explained how COVID-19 influenced its design, resulting in a tech-forward structure. For example, there are infra-red cameras that can non-invasively detect and provide an alert if someone’s temperature is elevated.

“If we have another pandemic situation, we have built-in automated systems to so detect and manage that type of event,” he said.

One Belmont is also big on the concept of ‘touchless’.

“We have four elevators — two of them are glass elevators — they are the latest KONE touchless elevators. There are no buttons to touch. Once you place your fingers within an inch of the number, it activates. These were designed during COVID when everybody had to go around trying to sterilise buttons and things. So the buttons are all touchless, the elevators are touchless controls,” said Cummings.

“The bathrooms are also touchless. They’re all Kohler, designed during COVID of course, so there’s nothing to sanitise. In fact, the principle of the building design was: from you park your car in the secured, covered, parking [area] to go to your desk, you don’t touch anything. You don’t touch the door. You don’t touch the elevator buttons. You go to the bathroom, there’s nothing to touch; nothing to touch means that there’s nothing to sanitise,” he added to audible sounds of admiration and applause.

One Belmont is essentially five storeys of office space built on top of a four-storey parking garage. It stands on an acre of land. Approached by the Tavares-Finson family to “unlock the value” of half an acre of land they owned, Sygnus bought the adjoining half acre and set about designing One Belmont.

The plan, from the outset, was to ensure that there was ample parking for anyone who goes there to do business. It can accommodate more than 300 cars
— good news for anyone who has ever tried to find adequate parking in New Kingston during the work week.

“Parking is typically a sunk cost for a developer, so he will put in the minimum stipulated. We decided to flip the script. We put in more than enough parking; everybody will get the parking that they need. But of course, what we did was to monetise it. The idea is, we have a building that has the level of parking that everybody has always been screaming for, as a part of the economic viability,” said Cummings.

Economic viability does not appear to be something One Belmont will have to worry about any time soon. Completed in December 2023, all the space has been taken.

“It is fully tenanted, it’s all AAA tenants. I can’t say who they are at this moment, but they are the best tenants you would want. All US dollar, all very long-term leases,” said Cummings.

He sounded like a proud parent, and it was understandable. In bringing One Belmont to life, he and his team managed the entire process: hiring the architects, engineers, getting all the requisite approvals, and securing the contractor.

“We did pretty much a cradle-to-grave approach with respect to how the product was curated,” explained Cummings.

That included putting measures in place to mitigate external risks over which they had no control, such as an increase in steel prices because of the pandemic.

“We were writing cheques for hundreds of millions of dollars to forward purchase 800 tonnes of steel to lock in the price that we had budgeted. We then also did a forward purchase of the glass curtain wall from the factory a year before we needed it. Clearly not all developers will have the wherewithal to write big cheques to offset this, but the idea is that you identify the risk and you mitigate it. And that’s one of the principal ways in which we were able to manage costs: because of the foresight, because of the risk register, and ensuring that we could respond to what was going on in the market,” said Cummings.

Risk mitigation is also built into the design. One Belmont’s triple-glazed glass curtain wall is about an inch-and-a half thick and can withstand a category five hurricane. It has an 80,000-gallon water tank designated to fight a fire; and it has a very advanced fire detection, annunciation and suppression system with 100 per cent sprinkler coverage.

There is another tank that stores potable water and there are two generators that can supply 1.5 megawatts of standby power. That means all the offices can operate without any interruption even in the event of a loss of power from the public supply.

“We took the time to curate a true Class A commercial building,” said Cummings.