River Club activists hit dead end
IT SEEMS that the activists who have been petitioning for years against the River Club redevelopment have not been able to come up with a plan of action and time is running out as the bulldozers are already revving their engines to start breaking ground. Yesterday activists held a briefing about the River Club after significant movements in the case.
Observatory Civic Association chairperson Leslie London said: “The development of the River Club is at a time of a century of injustice, and the alienation of public land happened at a time when state-owned institutions have been gutted. We don’t know on what basis that land was sold, but it was, and it is a site of heritage significance. We don’t want the golf course there, we want it to be a park and not developed into a Century City.”
In the latest development in the River Club fiasco, a plea was made to billionaire Jeff Bezos for assistance after it emerged that tech giant Amazon will be the anchor tenant if the multimillion-rand project is completed.
Civic groups have also lodged appeals with the Municipal Planning Tribunal, which gave approval to the Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust (LLPT).
Tauriq Jenkins, the high commissioner of the Goringhaicona Khoena Council, said they had been challenging every decision made about the development. “We are willing to fight this and we are doing it legally. We will go the full way legally.”
The LLPT has proposed the construction of several 10-storey buildings and 11.7 hectares of building in the middle of a 100-year-old floodplain. Twenty percent of the development would be allocated for residential use, of which one fifth would be dedicated to developer-subsidised inclusionary housing.
Estimated to cost R4 billion, the project would include residential, retail and commercial components, a hotel, offices, conference centre and schools.
Jody Aufrichtig, a trustee and spokesperson for the LLPT, said: “The River Club site is a privately owned piece of land.
“The private redevelopment proposal for the site has already undergone an extensive heritage commenting and response process as part of the basic assessment report submitted to the Western Cape government, which granted environmental authorisation for the project.
“The process is currently at the appeals stage, and we are of the opinion that the latest comment from the impact assessment committee should not have any impact on this process and the River Club redevelopment.”