Will investors reap the rewards?
The first residential block in the area since the late 1980s is rising
● What? A construction crane in Hillbrow? Until recently, a flesh-and-blood blue crane would have been a likelier sight in Johannesburg’s legendary high-rise suburb. But this winter, a veritable steel bird took flight over a site on the intersection of Kapteijn and Quartz streets. On that corner, Boost Property Management is building a 10-storey, 128unit apartment block, named Kapteijn Corner, at a cost of about R40m. It opens in November.
By all accounts, this is the first new residential block to be built in Hillbrow since the late 1980s. That makes it surprising, and symbolically potent — but as a show of faith in the area, it’s by no means a flash in the pan: savvy developers have been investing consistently in Hillbrow, refurbishing buildings and establishing neighbourhood improvement districts, for several years.
And while the gentrification story is dominated by flashy projects like Maboneng, on the eastern edge of the CBD, the substance of inner-city renewal will come from delivering decent housing to working-class families, not to hipsters and artists looking for a gritty urban lifestyle. That service is being delivered by unfashionable landlords like Boost’s Mark Steele.
Steele is not one for boosterism, despite the name of his company. He has no qualms about evicting tenants. He is a tough, grumpy, old-school property baron, raised on the streets he works in — and he works in a site office in a dimly lit room on the ground floor of a faded prewar block on Quartz Street, a stroll away from Kapteijn Corner.
A fat grey cat called Psycho prowls back and forth in front of a wall lined with dozens of lever-arch files bearing the names of Boost’s buildings. “The banks wouldn’t finance this project,” said Steele. “So we had to fund it ourselves.”
But there is no doubt Kapteijn Corner will wipe its face. It will be a no-frills building, in the vein of the vast townhouse complexes of the West Rand: face-brick exteriors, entrylevel granite counter tops, retail on the ground floor. Rents will start at about R2,500 for a bachelor flat, and there will be no problem filling the building with dependable tenants. There is a massive demand for affordable, decent housing close to the city and the northern suburbs, particular with petrol and public transport costs on the rise.
If and when the economy ticks up again, creating a modest surplus for workers, then these beautiful, ragged streets would offer rich promise as Johannesburg’s next developmental frontier to investors and city planners.
Gloomy economic climate
But the gloomy economic climate was an obstacle to a major Hillbrow revival, said Jonathan Liebmann, the entrepreneur who developed Maboneng, which remains the classic case study for successful inner-city renewal.
“Hillbrow is a South African story, and there hasn’t been economic growth which exceeds population growth since 2006.
“So we’ve almost been accustomed to a low-growth, recessionary environment. If that changed, you should be seeing 20 cranes in a place like Hillbrow. Look at the Atlantic seaboard — cranes everywhere. And if you’re living in SA, you must surely believe there must be a positive move on the horizon, and when it does happen, I think that areas like Hillbrow will receive an exponential boost from proper wage growth. We would see a really big bump in those areas. At the moment Hillbrow continues to trickle along until macro change arrives.”
Hillbrow is strategically central, and richly supplied with bus and rail transport links. It already has the required power, water and sewerage infrastructure to serve high densities — though its rubbish removal services could use some work.
And contrary to the Trumpian xenophobic propaganda recently dished out by mayor Herman Mashaba, Hillbrow is already full of working families — South Africans and immigrants alike — who are ready to pay decent money to live in better buildings and walk on safer, cleaner streets. Yes, there are plenty of crooks in Hillbrow, but there are plenty of crooks in Sandton too.
And on every block, there is a shabby architectural treasure aching for a makeover. Walk down the eastern blocks of Smit Street, overlooked by elegantly curved Art Deco and Modernist balconies, you feel a smoky, jazzy glow of ’50s and ’60s glamour. But these buildings were built and reserved for whites. The modernist dream was cynically grafted into the apartheid nightmare.
Later, Hillbrow created its own redemptive legacy in the early ’80s, when it became an island of quiet defiance of the Group Areas Act. Hillbrow was pretty much the only place in South Africa where a mixed-race couple could hope to live in peace.
The peace became harder to find in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when a long wave of drugs, guns and grime took over the streets. Things have improved, but peace and safety is still hard to find in Hillbrow. It takes some nerve to live here — but in exchange, you get a daily charge of urban voltage from the little Manhattan of Africa.
“Hillbrow has become on some level the quintessential Joburg working-class neighbourhood,” said Liebmann. “It wasn’t first envisaged as that, but it has become that and it needs to exist. What’s interesting for me as a committed urbanist is that I find the urban framework, the planning of Hillbrow, to be a massive success.”
This is in stark contrast to the atomised inertia up north, he says. “Essentially most of Joburg has become a postmodern urban sprawl, with a total lack of connectivity and density, which has resulted in low energy on the ground. We talk about Joburg being a high-energy city, but I don’t feel it in Fourways or Northcliff. So the rest of Joburg could learn a lot from Hillbrow.
“There is a low-income population, but they have in one sense the best lifestyle in the country, because they have street life. So Hillbrow remains a shining light for a kind of urbanism. On the negative side, they have almost no government services to speak of. Public services across the city are totally stressed, from parks to security to refuse removal. But in high-income areas like Sandton, those services are more functional because businesses subsidise them.
“That they don’t work in Hillbrow is an indicator that the residents don’t have an ability to subsidise. And because there are more people, there’s more rubbish, and there is definitely a lack of pride in the neighbourhood. I don’t know why that exists, perhaps it is because so many people don’t own their properties.”
Hillbrow remains messy because there is a vacuum of credible and legitimate power. None of the existing authorities — slum landlords, corrupt police, criminals — display both accountability and authority. Residents, meanwhile, are powerless to effect real change themselves.
At Maboneng that crucial element of accountable authority has been provided by Propertuity, the company Liebmann founded and recently left, though he still lives in Maboneng.
“The beauty of Maboneng is that there was a single developer for 11 years,” he said. “My view is that in a chaotic environment like the CBD it’s actually better for one company to take on a whole district. There is a lack of bureaucracy — you have a proper vision and the ability to take bold decisions. But it’s not really sustainable in the longer term. So now in Maboneng we’ve set up a proper community association, with landlords, owner-residents and businesses all represented.”
R3bn in investment
Liebmann said Maboneng will receive R3bn in investment in the next four years, most of it in residential projects.
“Once that was secured, I thought that was a good time to move on.”
But as Maboneng expands, the risk is that the community spirit of the early years could start to unravel. Residents have noticed a spike in crime, and are aware that they need to forge a public authority to replace the private authority that Liebmann and Propertuity have provided.
For Hillbrow, a similarly dominant investor would be hard to find. “In the case of Hillbrow, if a big developer took a view that they would buy up a lot of buildings, it could make a big impact. The problem is that there are lots of sectional title buildings, which are not really opportunities for developers, because it’s almost impossible to buy up all the units in a building.”
Carel de Wit of property management group Indluplace, which has buildings in various inner-city suburbs, said the dream was that all the inner-city precincts would one day merge into a functional whole.
“Maboneng, Newtown and the Fashion District each have their own unique character, but the idea behind all these improvement districts is that the gaps between them will eventually disappear.”
Until then, De Wit said, the inner city would keep on rewarding investors. “Hillbrow tenants are good tenants, contrary to popular belief. They pay well, and vacancies are low. So people are making good money out of their buildings. People have to stay somewhere, and they don’t have a lot of choices. There is more a perceived risk to investing in Hillbrow than a real risk.”