Sandton’s R250m home in the sky
● SA’s financial hub seems blissfully unaware of the gloomy economy, and a new record-breaking apartment block set to open in Sandton next month is doing nothing to dispel that notion.
Still festooned with cranes, the 55-storey Leonardo is Africa’s tallest building and its residents will be among the world’s wealthiest. Its crowning glory is the three-storey Leonardo Suite, which spans parts of floors 53, 54 and 55 and is on sale for a massive R250m.
The building will also house a six-star hotel as well as 232 residential units, of which 217 have already been bought, mostly offplan. About half were sold to locals.
The cheapest apartment went for R4.5m. The most expensive so far — one of eight penthouses — was sold for R60m, according to Legacy Group chairman Bart Dorrestein, who will not divulge the identities of buyers.
The Leonardo Suite has four master bedrooms, a gym, a home theatre/cinema and 500m² of gardens and play areas.
It is serviced by its own private lift — which can get from ground to the 55th floor in a minute — and has another internal glass lift running through its three levels. The top roof terrace has a 16m swimming pool and 400m² of entertainment space, from which Pretoria’s Union Buildings are visible on a clear day. There are three sets of staff quarters.
Gijs Foden, sales director for the Legacy Group, said there had been keen interest in the pricey penthouse from “businesspeople” but no formal offers yet.
The Legacy Group, which Dorrestein runs and partially owns, also developed Nelson Mandela Square, the Da Vinci and the Michelangelo Towers, as well as other high-end projects.
The group did not start out with the intention of breaking height records. Construction on the Leonardo began in November 2015, with the initial plan being a 33-storey highrise.
“Once we were comfortable with the market’s response, we set the extended height to 43 floors,” said Dorrestein.
Then Legacy used its own equity to acquire the shell of the next 10 floors, to be developed into a six-star hotel. And then came the penthouses.
The building has overtaken the Johannesburg CBD’s Carlton Centre, the continent’s tallest building for about four decades.
Apart from the 232 apartments, it has five floors of office space, a conference and business centre and retail space. There is also a restaurant, pool, gym and spa.
Of the office space available, 300m² is left out of 7,500m². But Dorrestein said he would not open the hotel until the market picks up.
“Now is the toughest time in our history because of the lack of direction,” said Dorrestein. “But trophy developments, which are there for the long term, retain their value.”
He has always been something of a risktaker. When the company built Sandton Square (now Mandela Square) in 1992, “everyone said we were crazy”, said Dorrestein. The Michelangelo Towers opened in 2008 and the Da Vinci in time for the Fifa World Cup in 2010.
Property expert Craig Smith, head of research for Anchor Stockbrokers, said the buyer of the Leonardo Suite would probably be a foreigner, as wealthy South Africans tended more to look for property on Cape Town’s Atlantic seaboard.
Asked what kind of an investment the apartments were, Smith said it was a hard question to answer.
“The penthouse of the tallest building in a wealthy area, it’s a status thing, not driven by any return of profit.”
But he warned that the Sandton property bubble could burst.
“A lot of the new buildings exist because tenants have vacated the old buildings. Those [old] offices are struggling [to find new tenants]. But there is a demand to live in the suburbs of Sandton, Rosebank and Waterfall.” — Additional reporting by Belinda Pheto and Alex Patrick