The investment in Portmore will allow the UCC which enrols some 5,000 students per year, spread across several campuses, to partially consolidate its operations, though the primary purpose of the acquisition is expansionary - bringing classes and higher education closer to the markets outside the Corporate Area.

Last week Adams confirmed that the agreement with Cable & Wireless was all but signed, and that having lost the bid for an alternative and preferred location in Kingston, he expected to sign off on the Portmore real estate as early as this week.

"We won that bid and C&W had given us a deadline (until last week) and we asked them for extra time," Adams stated last week Monday.

"Our first choice was Oxford Manor."  Oxford Manor is the 54,927 building on Oxford Road in Kingston, that is owned by Finsac and which Cabinet decided to sell to a government agency - the Planning Institute of Jamaica - though the UCC had made a $250 million cash offer for the asset.

Adams said he was disappointed in not winning the Oxford Manor bid because he would have been able to move into the building immediately, thus easing some of the space pressure his school now faces.

Nevertheless, in Portmore, the UCC will be able to do something that would be undoable on Oxford Road: The school will invest millions of dollars to build residences for students, in addition to offices, and lecture theatres.

"We will utilise parts of the space for lectures especially lectures at weekends and for our early bird programme," he explained.

But more importantly, the Portmore infrastructure will allow the UCC to reconstitute its business model, by vertically integrating finance, investments, and real estate companies with the educational component of the business.

Adams expects to begin working on the project in September, once both parties sign off on the purchase, but could at the time of the interview provide no details of the cost or how the investment would be broken down into debt and equity.

Yesterday, Cable & Wireless' vice-president of public relations Errol Miller, said he was not aware of the specific details surrounding this transaction - and could only confirm that the land was for sale. 

The UCC of which Adams, a 45 year-old self-made entrepreneur, is executive chairman and principal shareholder, was formed in January 1992 as the Institute of Management Sciences.

In October 2002, that institute paid the Matalon family $90 million for the Institute of Management and Production, taking it over as a going concern. Later that year, Adams created the UCC as the umbrella vehicle for both the IMS and the IMP.

As part of its expansion drive, the UCC has, for the past few years been looking at other real estate including the former C&W training centre near Cross Roads in Kingston.

But according to Adams, that property lacked adequate parking for the school.