58 April 2015 - Business View Caribbean
It’s the Place to Live
Richmond St. Ann provides first-world residential experience
Upon coming across the same land encountered cen-
turies earlier by famed New World pioneer Christopher
Columbus, Elias Issa, a long-time fixture in the Jamai-
can tourism industry, had a plan.
He’d take a sprawling tract that had fallen into disre-
pair through years of use as a sugar plantation, citrus
farm and cattle ranch, and lift it back to the majesty
that prompted Columbus to wax eloquent.
“The fairest island that eyes beheld. Mountainous and
the land seems to touch the sky,” the Italian-born ex-
plorer is said to have written of Jamaica’s north shore.
“All full of valleys, fields and plains.”
But he knew it wasn’t going to get there without work.
“(Issa) was doing a drive through one of the housing
developments being done somewhere in Montego
Bay,” said Steve Bennett, managing director of the
Richmond Development Company, which is chaired by
Issa and is overseeing the multi-phase project across
the 530-acre spread.
“He saw a lot of concrete and disorganization, and it
just hit him that Jamaica needs something, develop-
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