End of era soon for iconic block
Perm Building’s disposal continues trend in the CBD of meeting needs of next generation
THE PERM Building in Durban’s old Smith Street, now Anton Lembede Street, will be among the CBD properties on offer at Broll Auctions and Sales’ multi-property auction in Joburg on September 18.
The major sale, featuring several properties in various South African centres, will take place at The Wanderers Club in Illovo at noon.
It’s here that the hammer will come down on a building that housed the Durban city operations of the SA Permanent Building & Investment Society – an institution that gave millions of South Africans loans for their first homes, or dished out a few pounds in savings to customers who carried pocket-sized, often well-worn distinctive orange savings books.
Presenting the little grubby savings book was enough to draw cash – no ID books or municipal bills were demanded.
Automated burglar-proof swing doors and CCTV cameras were unheard of.
The 10-storey Perm Building also recalls days when building societies occupied prestige buildings – the days when our bigger cities all were starting to have clearly defined central business districts, visible from afar by skyscrapers clumped together in the main streets where money and goods changed hands.
In Durban, the financial institutions tended to clump on Smith Street, with the shops trading in what was then West Street.
The SA Permanent Building and Investment Society, later known simply as The Perm, was the second largest building society in the country when the building opened its doors in Smith Street decades ago. The Perm had originally started life as a financial institution in Kimberley back in 1841 and about half a century later boldly decided to go national when the SA Permanent Building and Investment Society was established.
The trusty old Perm survived Boer and world wars but by the 1980s, the days of building societies – with their optimistic “borrow short and lend longer” philosophy – matching banks, were numbered. In 1988, Nedbank merged with The Perm to form Nedperm Bank and in 1992, the word “perm” had lost all permanency when Nedperm and Nedbank became Nedcor Bank.
Nedbank is still a tenant in part of the 10 000m² office space in the Perm Building corner block that will be auctioned by Broll as part of a “listed fund disposal” which means, basically, that it’s an asset no longer required or profitable enough to retain in its current form by its present owners.
But in many ways, these disposals are win-win situations. CBD structures previously used for banking and other commercial operations are now finding new leases of life, notably as apartment blocks, and Durban certainly is one CBD in South Africa where high-rise living has been nothing new for many decades.
So Broll should not be short of bidders when it sells the Perm Building next month. The company sold another Durban CBD property for a finance house with building society origins when the Absa Building (also in Anton Lembedi Street) was knocked down for about R100 million AUGUST 26 2018 recently. Norman Raad, chief executive of Broll, said at the time that the acquisition would bring “positivity to the Durban CBD, with changes and improvements expected to follow”.
So the Perm Building’s disposal continues the trend and this old building will no doubt end up meeting different needs of a different generation of Durbanites.
For more details about the auction of the Perm Building, contact Ish Hendricks on 082 908 6653 or Tim Counsell on 071 247 2338 or see www. broll.com or email auction@ broll.com.