The Cape Town CBD is set to add another high-rise to the already business-booming, congested area. Less than a year after a vacant site opposite the building was auctioned for a planned development of a 55-metre high “landmark building”, a public participation process for the proposed skyscraper was opened last week.
Less than a year after a vacant site in central Cape Town was auctioned for a planned development of a 55-metre high “landmark building”, a public participation process for the proposed skyscraper was opened last week.
The city’s foreshore will be the home to both the buildings, where developments like the new Netcare Christian Barnard Memorial Hospital and an extension of the Cape Town International Convention Centre have already taken their place.
More than R16-billion has been invested in developments in the Mother City’s four precincts since 2012, according to the State of Cape Town Central City Report 2016 by the City Central Improvement District (CCID).
The Strand Street Concourse, serving as an underground pedestrian walkway linking the Golden Acre Mall, Cape Town Station and the St. Georges Mall, is a big part of the city’s developments. The city is hoping to amplify and maximise the area’s commercial and office space with the refurbishment, which will include the construction of a municipal court with holding cells.
Joint Managing Director of property auction house The High Street Auction Co, Lance Chalwin-Milton, has warned against the city focusing all development in the congested CBD.
“There simply isn’t endless space for the city to develop, and demand for the limited amount of land with keep prices at a premium,” says Chalwin-Milton.
“According to the Cape Town Central City Improvement District, some 30% of the entire city’s economically active populace is currently employed in the less than two square kilometres that comprise the CBD footprint. That’s an enormous number of residents converging on a very small area to go to work, and excludes visitors and approximately 30,000 people who are serviced daily by the various government departments within the downtown precinct.”
Chalwin-Milton says that investors should be looking to other areas of the city, such as the northern suburbs and Cape Winelands to begin to developments.
Photography Stocksnap