New tenant for Woodmill Walk
KNYSNA - For the first time in more than a decade, the main store at the Woodmill Walk shopping centre will have a new tenant, set to open by the beginning of December.
The main store, which was custom built and fitted for Edgars, has been empty since the national retailer vacated the store in 2011. In the 11 years since, other stores in the centre also closed their doors or moved, and for the last few years the centre has largely been vacant. According to Jim Parkes, managing director of Geo Parkes & Sons, the Woodmill Walk owners, the opening of Knysna Mall caused a shifting of Knysna's retail hub away from the Woodmill Walk area of town and played a role in the withdrawal of national retailers such as Foschini, Miladys and Truworths.
One other significant factor that did not work in favour of the owners of the centre was the possibility of Knysna Municipality purchasing the property for development into additional municipal office space. This process began in August 2019, when the municipality issued a tender to "find suitably qualified service providers to submit proposals for the provision of leased office space and parking facilities for the Knysna Municipality for various departments for an estimated period of three years."
The rationale
The municipality needed to find new, consolidated, office space as its administrative offices were - and still are - split up over several rented buildings.
Woodmill Walk bid on and was awarded this initial tender, but the tender was cancelled. Six months later, in April 2020, the municipality reissued the same tender for additional office space. Once more Woodmill
Walk bid on and were awarded this tender.
However, the centre's owners approached the municipality with a proposal to sell the building rather than lease it to them. This proposal reached advanced stages in early 2021 and under the directive of the council, then acting municipal manager, Dawid Adonis, appointed an independent entity to compile a report on the suitability of the Woodmill Walk building as well as the viability of the municipality constructing its own building from scratch.
Nature of the purchase
According to the agenda for a municipal council meeting on 31 March 2021, the Woodmill Walk Building offers 4 153m2 of floor space with rooftop parking of more or less the same size – enough to ensure that all municipal administrative officials, except those at the Corporate Building and Finance Building, would be under one roof.
The report found that it would cost the municipality R35m to purchase the building, and a further R34m for building renovations – a total of R69-million. But, the municipality would have had to take out an external loan to finance the purchase, which would have seen the total payment made on the purchase well exceed R100m. Despite this, at the aforementioned council meeting, Council made the decision to purchase Woodmill Walk and a notice was published in April 2021 to this effect.
Non-commitment
Pen was never put to paper, however, and in April this year a workshop was held to determine how the municipality was going to fund the purchase and redevelopment, but nothing came of it.
Not long after, Knysna Municipality informed Geo Parkes & Sons that the purchase would no longer take place, ending a nearly three-year long period of toing and froing and non-commitment. During this time Woodmill Walk could not take on any new tenants due to the fact that the municipality could complete the purchase at any time. But, once the purchase was off the table, centre management set about attracting new tenants and secured one for their main store for the first time in 11 years.
Preparations of the store for the new tenant have already begun, and the centre aims to bring in other tenants too.
Origins of Woodmill Walk
Woodmill Walk was built by Jim and George Parkes in 1998 on the site of some old staff housing previously belonging to Geo Parkes & Sons. The façade of one of the old houses is built into the exterior wall on the Spring Street side. Two other houses were moved and rebuilt at other locations – one became Mother Holly's Tea Garden in the Millwood Forest, which has since closed.
The other now forms part of the Millwood Museum in town and the remaining house was used for the repair of the two re-erected houses.