Century City Square gets its Green Stars

THE MIXED- use Century City Square development, which was developed by the Rabie Property Group at a cost of R1 billion, has been awarded a 4-Star Green Star Custom Mixed Use Design rating by the Green Building Council of South Africa.

This is the first development in the Western Cape to be awarded a green star using this custom mixed use tool and only the second in the country.

Century City Square consists of a conference centre with a total capacity of 1 900 over 20 venues, a 125room hotel, 15 000m2 of offices, 51 apartments, showrooms and restaurants all set around a public open square. The entire development is set over a super basement, which together with a structured parking garage, provides undercover parking for 1 330 cars.

Steve Cloete, Rabie project manager, says Century City Square was a pilot project for the new mixed use rating tool. “Our green building consultant worked very closely with the GBCSA to formulate the rating tool and in future Century City Square will be a benchmark for all mixed use developments going for green star rating.”

Rabie’s green building consultant, Paul Carew of PJ Carew Consulting, says the project posed immense challenges in getting all the documentation together as so many buildings and consultants were involved. “However, in spite of these difficulties we received a very high round one score from the GBCSA which said the quality of the submission helped them in their assessment of the project and that it had been much easier to review than expected.

Century City Square, which consists of six buildings, falls within the Bridgeways Precinct of Century City which is being developed as a green building precinct and is home to five other green-rated office buildings, four of which were also developed by Rabie. The Business Centre and Philip Morris were awarded four-star Green Star v1 ratings in the design and as built categories. Chevron received a fivestar Green Star v1 rating in both categories and the 18 000m2 Bridge Park development is the new home of Absa’s regional offices.