Eighty years after Anglo American first set up its headquarters in Joburg’s then thriving inner city, the mining giant has decided to walk away.
It has plans to vacate a number of buildings, including its main SA headquarters at 55 Marshall Street and those that house its divisions and subsidiaries.
It will leave behind a grimy city that resembles a ghost town after dark, an area where few large firms have remained.
Back in 1939, the staff of Anglo American, then around 200 people, left Anmercosa House in Hollard Street and set off for 44 Main Street in SA’s vibey commercial centre.
Anglo American later moved to Marshall Street and also occupied other buildings nearby, thereby creating its own business precinct. But the multinational giant, now based in Britain, says it has outgrown these old buildings and wants to follow the trend set by other firms to consolidate into one modern building.
Once the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions are eased, Anglo will get back on track with its plan to move a staff complement of about 1,200 to its new home in Rosebank in the second quarter of 2021. This is a business node that around 10 years ago was still a trendy suburb with 2½ malls, a few hotels and some medium-sized office buildings.
Anglo will relocate to 144 Oxford, a new 35,000m² premium-grade office building owned by Growthpoint Properties. The development is large enough to contain six football fields.
Anglo will be the biggest tenant in the development, which includes two office towers and a centralised office core. Details of exactly how much space it will occupy have not been released.
The new building, designed by Paragon Architects, will enable more collaborative work. The company has also recognised that most of its staff don’t live near the city centre but in more upmarket suburbs to the north.
Paul Kollenberg, Growthpoint’s head of asset management for offices, says 144 Oxford is a high-end asset that will draw blue-chip tenants.
Growthpoint bought the land in 2013 and the building was largely constructed to tenants’ specifications.
However, Kollenberg says he doesn’t expect the company to develop any further buildings on spec in Gauteng in the near future. Growthpoint sees 144 Oxford remaining its flagship building in Rosebank for a number of years, given the impact of the anaemic economy on the property sector.
"The economic environment is just too weak right now, and we don’t have enough tenant supply. We will rather develop tenant-driven office buildings for the foreseeable future, at least until the economy has recovered," he says.
Paragon Architects director Anthony Orelowitz echoes the sentiment. "We have some architectural work in Rosebank and Sandton but none of the projects are of scale."
He says the property market was already subdued before the Covid-19 pandemic and is now "a shadow of its former self’.
It will get worse before it gets better, he expects. "This is driven not only by the lack of growth in the country but also by the fact that the property funds and real estate investment trusts will need to recapitalise when market conditions eventually start to change."
In consolidating its premises, Anglo follows the cue of medical aid giant Discovery, which moved all its Sandton staff — who were scattered across several buildings — into its new glass-façade headquarters in 2018. Chemicals and fuels firm Sasol also left a few tired buildings in Rosebank to move into a mega-building in Sandton.
The decision to locate a Gautrain station in Rosebank, making it a waypoint between Pretoria and Parktown, transformed the suburb.
SA’s second-largest real estate group, Redefine Properties, moved from its Arnold Road office in Rosebank to Rosebank Towers two years ago.
Standard Bank also moved its corporate and investment banking operations and its executives to Rosebank in 2013, leaving its corporate head office in Simmonds Street in the CBD.
Some inner-city precincts such as BankCity in Newtown, which houses FNB and the Absa Precinct, are well managed.
However, these may soon be the only large firms left downtown. The exodus from the old city centre began in the 1990s and extended into the early 2000s.
Since then numerous mayors, heritage organisations, entrepreneurs, architects and real estate cowboys have tried to revitalise the inner city, with mixed results.
A few smaller law firms have had to remain in town to be within an 8km radius of courts so they can act as correspondent attorneys, but large commercial firms have firmly positioned themselves in some of Sandton’s newest and smartest buildings, including the "chequerboard" building that houses Norton Rose.
Management consulting group Bain & Co and soft drinks giant Coca-Cola are based in nearby Melrose.
Other firms have moved to growing commercial nodes such as Waterfall City in Midrand, where accounting and advisory firms PwC and Deloitte are based.
Anglo says it wants to leave a positive legacy in the inner city and give back to the communities there, rather than abandoning its roots.
The 44 Main Street office is already a heritage building and features in inner-city tours. Discussions are under way to turn 55 Marshall Street into an extension of Wits University’s mining school.
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