Durban cracks down on its CBD blocks of shame
Urban regeneration projects under way for housing, transport
● The eThekwini municipality, determined to give the inner city a facelift, has resorted to the courts to identify errant landlords whose properties are suffering from neglect.
The city is profiling buildings visibly in a state of decline and structurally securing them at the cost to the owners who are expected to be slapped with rates increases and penalties for decaying properties.
A total of 79 buildings in a state of decay have been identified, 39 of them in the Mahatma Gandhi precinct. In May, the city applied to the high court for a “destruction order” for two buildings.
About 90% of offending property owners have been served with contravention notices.
The municipality confirmed it had been struggling to contact property owners and to serve notices directly, especially in sectional-title buildings where owners have relocated, are dead, or the buildings have been illegally occupied.
Municipal spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela said: “The city has started approaching the courts as part of intensifying its plans to address bad buildings.
“A formal announcement will be made by the city leadership in due course to outline its full and revised bad-building management plan as part of the inner-city regeneration programme.”
The city said it would take about six months to complete the profiling exercise for decaying buildings in the inner city.
Two years ago, eThekwini mayor Zandile Gumede threatened to take over dilapidated buildings and turn them into hotels run by black business people. She made the threat while tabling the city’s R45-billion budget in 2017 and said the owners of decaying buildings needed to be found.
But at the time, Hoosen Moolla, head of the Inner City eThekwini Regeneration and Urban Management Programme, told a Durban daily newspaper that dealing with absentee landlords was a cumbersome process that was often settled in court.
The eThekwini municipality recently announced R62bn worth of capital investments for its inner-city regeneration project, which is expected to create at least 300,000 full-time jobs over a 20-year period.
The city announced several major projects, all at different stages of design and development, in the inner city.
The inner-city renewal project is earmarked for the area from the city hall to the beach, which will see investments worth R36bn from private sources, and R16bn to be spent on the area between the city hall and the Warwick Market.
Other key projects include:
● A R400m city investment in the 750m extension of the Durban promenade, which is 75% complete;
● A R240m investment in water supply infrastructure and public areas of the Mahatma Gandhi precinct. A contractor will be named soon;
● A retail mall and residential apartment investment worth R2.8bn that is expected to be launched in November; and
● A R44m Rivertown development as well as a R2bn investment in the Centrum site, which will be a mixed-use development including an underground car park. This is expected to take eight years to complete.
The city said the precinct development approach was aimed at increasing residential opportunities, encouraging densification and creating a well-functioning residential property market.
This would provide a range of accommodation options for people across the socioeconomic spectrum.
Six sites have been identified for 10,000 social and “gap” housing units. They are Block AK in Greyville, which is still the subject of a lengthy land restitution claim; Umgeni Road site; Victoria Park; Albert Park; and the Warwick bus depot.
Mayisela said the city was working in partnership with a local private developer to rejuvenate the Point Waterfront to a “vibrant precinct for leisure, retail and living”.
Gareth Bailey, Pam Golding Properties area principal for Durban coastal, said Durban’s city and beachfront had vast untapped potential and it was good to see business and local government working together to achieve these goals.
“The Durban promenade has been a wonderful success and we look forward to seeing the final stage completed,” he said.
“The cleanup and revitalisation of our central business district is long overdue and, when realised, will add significantly to the progress our north coast has already made in establishing KwaZulu-Natal as the new property capital of SA,” Bailey said.
This week, the city also announced that Go! Durban, its much-vaunted integrated public-transport network aimed at providing flexible, safe and cost-effective transport, was a step closer to implementation.
Phase one of the multibillion-rand transport project, known as the C3 route, stretching from Pinetown to KwaMashu’s Bridge City, was expected to go live last year but hit a snag as a result of a feud between the eThekwini transport authority and taxi associations.
The taxi associations threatened contractors and asked them to leave the site, claiming the transport authority had reneged on its promise to compensate them as their businesses were affected by the construction.
Thami Manyathi, head of the eThekwini transport authority, announced on Tuesday that the project was now expected to go live in September with the C3 corridor. He said about 10 stations were ready and 22 standard buses were available.
The city has started approaching the courts … to address bad buildings Msawakhe Mayisela
Municipal spokesperson