The sound of Sea Point used to be gulls screaming and gaartjies yelling “Cape Town!” from the windows of CBD-bound taxis. If you had the money to live on the cliffs that plunge from Victoria Road, you could hear the crash of the Atlantic Ocean against the edge of Africa.
Sea Point now shudders with mechanical excavators thudding. On a clear day in Regent Road, you can see cranes forever.
Since January 2020, along Main and Regent or within a block of them and from Rocklands Road to Clarens Road — a distance of 1.5km — 17 residential complexes have been or are being built.
Along with the cost of property, buyers might also consider the cost in rates.
Developers are required to pay the City of Cape Town a proportional amount to ease the strain their new buildings put on the electricity grid, the water supply system, roads, stormwater drainage and wastewater and sewage management.
But the relationship between the city and developers is notoriously cosy. A building on Main Road scheduled for completion in April 2027 will comprise nine storeys and 174 units priced from R3.19m to R13.5m. Just R1.89m has been paid to offset the impact on the infrastructure.
That’s 0.34% of what would be raised if all the units were sold for the lowest asking price. Sea Pointers can’t even count on the R1.89m being spent in their suburb because the city does not ring-fence those funds. The money will have been flushed into the system.
The developer, Rawson, did not respond to questions of whether it considered that amount fair.
Ward councillor Nicola Jowell referred the FM to the council. A spokesperson says: “The development charge liability … is calculated based on the proposed land use right, and a credit is given for the existing land use right.
“Generally, the amount payable reflects the additional land use right and not the existing demand imposed by the existing land use right for which a credit is provided in terms of the calculation of the development charge amount.
“The development charge liability is calculated using industry standards and unit demands and reflects the actual cost of providing bulk infrastructure. It is adjusted annually using the [civil engineering price index] for civil engineering services. In so doing, the city ensures the development charges reflect a fair value for the bulk services infrastructure.”
An urban planner who used to work for the city tells the FM: “The forefathers gave properties lots of rights, allowing swift conversion of houses to multistorey blocks of up to seven or so storeys. The assumption is that infrastructure has been designed to cater for that.
“But in a place like Sea Point, which is older than other areas, the policy doesn’t work because that assumption doesn’t hold. There’s a lot more bulk coming on stream, but the infrastructure is not designed for it, and the contributions the developers are paying are not proportional to the additional burden.
There’s excitement, opportunity, the creation of jobs and other wonderful things, but if this isn’t managed properly there will be implications
— Mark McKeon
“It’s assumed the city will have to fork out to upgrade infrastructure. So the ratepayers of Cape Town will end up subsidising this cost.”
Can Sea Pointers look forward to a future of faeces floating down potholed streets lined by burning buildings? Probably not — the western seaboard of the Atlantic is too powerful as a voter bloc.
But this isn’t hypothetical. Mark McKeon, who owns The Glen Boutique Hotel a block away from Main Road, discovered this year that the building’s water pressure has halved from what it was 17 years ago.
“I was told it was because if the pressure was maintained, it would cause [pipe] bursts,” McKeon tells the FM. “The infrastructure is so old that if the water pressure isn’t lowered there would be more underground bursts.
“We’ve spoken to four companies that specialise in this issue and have been told that in the event of a fire the sprinkler system wouldn’t be effective.
“Nobody wants Cape Town to be more successful than I do. But isn’t it irrational to have all this development at the same time? There’s excitement, opportunity, the creation of jobs and other wonderful things, but if this isn’t managed properly there will be implications.
“I want to do everything I can to see this wonderful city and its community be successful, but there are signs that the infrastructure is beyond the number of new developments.”
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