Digicel Foundation has spent approximately $42 million to renovate a building at Alpha Institute for the modern state-of-the-art Alpha Music School Colm Delves Centre, which will allow inner-city youth an opportunity to learn music.

The facility was handed over to Alpha Institute during a ceremony at the South Camp Road campus on Tuesday. The renovation work was completed at the end of November.

According to Digicel Foundation’s Construction Project Manager Carnel Campbell, a lot of effort was put into ensuring that the project was completed on time and met the required standard.

“I can say our investment was around $42 million, which was for construction and some level of the equipment. We initiated the project in September and it was subjected to a two-month timeline. It was a very difficult project, but we made the timeline at the end of November.

“We had initially wanted to hand it over the same time, seeing that we would have planned our handover for Colm Delves from last year and it was not made possible and it took some amount of maintenance to ensure that the quality remains to this date,” Campbell said.

He said the work involved changing the tiles and roofing while also altering the aesthetic within the look of the original structure, but ensuring that the students can also be in a comfortable environment to learn. It also meant maintaining the quality of the Digicel brand.

“There was a lot of work involved, in terms of, we started with the structure as just a regular building, we came through look at tiling, fixing the roofing and doing a lot of drywall and soundproof rehabilitation works.

“The end product for me is amazing. All the work that has gone into it required a lot of effort and time, a lot of meetings, a lot of quality checks, to just keep everyone on track to ensure that we can have this wonderful project,” Campbell said.

The facility is named in honour of former Digicel Group’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Colm Delves, who died of cancer in April last year.

During the ceremony, Delves, who is a native of Ireland, was remembered as a lover of Jamaican culture and music, who embedded himself in the vibes and atmosphere of the island.

“We couldn’t think of a better way to honour him (Delves) than to work with Alpha to foster the talent of young musicians and to contribute to the continuation of Jamaica’s musical legacy,” said Denis O’Brien, Chairman of Digicel and patron of the Digicel Foundation.