CBD boom goes on but caution needed
Time to cement gains, become resilient to weather the storm ahead
WHILE development in Cape Town’s city centre was booming with projects under construction worth R4.3 billion, and planned or proposed development worth a further R8.1bn, more needed to be done to create a resilient CBD to weather the economic and political uncertainty facing the country.
This was the message from the Central City Improvement District (CCID) at its annual business breakfast in Cape Town yesterday.
CCID chairperson Rob Kane said just as the rest of the country was feeling the pressure of economic and political uncertainty, so was Cape Town’s traditional CBD.
“Now is the time to consolidate, and while we look proudly at our gains over the past few years as the central city, we also need to look towards both short-term and long-term survival and the best way to ensure it.
“It’s time not to think so much in terms first of supply and then demand, but to look carefully first at where demand lies.”
CCID chief executive Tasso Evangelinos, with reference to the city’s recent incorporation into the Rockefeller foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities programme, said: “Over the past five years, we’ve been publishing our annual investment guide, ‘The State of Cape Town Central City Report’, in which we’ve collated data on investment and trends that have surfaced in terms of our area.
“We now want investors interested in the CBD to use this body of work to look cross-sectorally to make the best investment decisions not only for themselves in the short-term, but in how we can all work together to ensure that opportunities continue into the future.”
Carola Koblitz, communications and marketing manager at CCID and author and editor of the publication, reflected on the results of the 2016 report and provided an update on trends over the last six months. “We’re starting to see a consolidation in the central city in terms of growth over the past few years equally across a number of sectors – from commercial property and the development of new residential property, to the changing face of retail.”
Koblitz said the residential market seemed to have cooled off.
On rentals in the city centre, Koblitz said there was a slight decline in the cost of monthly rentals with more units available for rent than in December. “We have 230 units to rent in the CBD versus 112 in December. We’ve also seen a slight decline in average monthly rentals from R15 081 to R14 000 for a one-bedroom.”
Koblitz, commenting in the City of Cape