V&A Waterfront - The Waterfront Story

The future of Granger Bay

admin — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 08:03:37 +0000

Ever since investigations for Cape Town’s new small craft harbour started in 1979, Granger Bay was regarded as the cherry in future development, but one with considerable challenges. At that time, Granger Bay was regarded as the only available location for a small craft harbour although there were calls for SA Transport Services to make Victoria Basin available and to flood the old quarry for additional moorings.

A 1:80 model of Granger Bay had been built at the behest of the Fisheries Development Corporation (then responsible for SA’s small harbours) at the CSIR’s wave-modelling facility at Stellenbosch. That team was headed by Prof. Deon Retief (also a member of the Minister’s Waterfront Steering Committee). They tested viable breakwater configurations and wave surges in the deeper waters.

In 1982 a presentation and report was given to Dr Gerrit Viljoen, minister of sport. The illustration of the proposal for Granger Bay was prepared by Louis Karol Architects working with the late Rob Meek from GAPP and Royal Cape Yacht Club (RCYC).

It was essentially a new and permanent home for RCYC and base for the Cape-to-Rio yacht races — one of the few sports SA could still participate in at that time.

All the V&A’s planning over 18 years — from 1989 until the Atkins Report prepared for the foreign owners in 2007 — showed revised options for the development of Granger Bay. The Atkins proposal was never adopted by the V&A’s board because it was not financially feasible. But this was a board that never invested anything into the development of V&A Waterfront. In fact, the only investment the foreign owners made into V&AW was the $100,000 that the Atkins Report cost in professional fees. (There is a QR code link to the full report in the print & eBook versions of The Waterfront Story.)

The following are some of the designs produced between 1989 and 2006 (click on an image to open a slide show and please note that the dates on some of the images are incorrect):

What is expected for Granger Bay’s future now?

While the Atkins Report was declared financially not feasible, the planning environment has changed too. Land reclamation from the sea has been moved from a Provincial responsibility to a National responsibility, which could make permissions far more difficult to achieve. Black economic empowerment conditions could also limit, top-end, exclusive apartments and the viability of the marina.

The Heatherwick Studio — responsible for the redevelopment of the old Grain Silos for Zeitz MOCAA — has been appointed to prepare proposals for the development of Granger Bay. David Green doesn’t like talking about a project until it is a fait accompli, so the public can’t expect to see any more planning proposals until it is cast in stone.

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ARCHIVES: The first 10 Years

admin — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 11:50:08 +0000

Written and published in 1999 by Carl Momberg, and followed on The first 5 Years which he wrote and published in 1994. It tells the story of the phenomenal growth and success of the V&A Waterfront since work started in 1989.

The post ARCHIVES: The first 10 Years first appeared on The Waterfront Story.

Cape Town toasts a record 2022/23 cruise tourism season

Wesgro media release — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 08:19:54 +0000

Cape Town and the Western Cape achieved a record-breaking cruise tourism season, dominated by high-spend source markets including the USA, Germany, and the UK.

Commencing in October 2022 and wrapping in May 2023, the past season has welcomed 145,000 cruise passengers as well as 42,000 crew members to the Cape’s shores.

In total, the 2022/2023 season welcomed 75 ships with 41 turnaround visits – this is double the number of ship calls when compared to the last complete season in 2019/2020, which saw 39 ship visits with an estimated 42,000 arriving passengers.

(more…)

The post Cape Town toasts a record 2022/23 cruise tourism season first appeared on The Waterfront Story.

CSI was R11bn last year. But is business staying usefully connected to social need?

admin — Sun, 14 May 2023 09:41:46 +0000

The Rotary Club of South Africa recently invited V&A Waterfront’s head of social impact, Henry Mathys, to join a panel of distinguished speakers that also included Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and Judge Dennis Davis. In this extract from Henry’s talk, he engages with the evolution of understanding about business’s social responsibilities. (From solve.waterfront.co.za)

Since 1997, there has been a more than threefold increase in the number of NPOs and civil society organisations stepping in to try to compensate for government’s failures to address social issues. The Department of Social Development reports that from approximately 70 000 registered NPOs then, there were more than 220 000 by 2020.

The corporate world is stepping up, too. Trialogue’s Business in Society handbook for 2022 says total CSI spend last year amounted to R10.9bn, a more than seven-fold increase from 1998’s R1.5bn.

But how is that working for South Africa?

FROM CHARITABLE GIVING TO ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT

What used to be referred to as Corporate Social Responsibility has evolved significantly. From an initial focus on straight philanthropy, which involved companies making charitable donations, today’s Corporate Social Investment (CSI) shifts the focus to active investment in social initiatives that aligned with a company’s business strategy.

With CSI, companies began to factor in how investments in social initiatives could have a positive impact on their own long-term success, driven by an acceptance that businesses have a responsibility to contribute to the communities in which they operate. In 2019, 75% of South African companies had a CSI budget, with the majority allocating between 1% and 3% of their net profit.

More recently, the concept of Shared Value has emerged as a further evolution.

Shared Value goes beyond CSI, as it also involves creating a sustainable business model that benefits both the company and society – it identifies areas where a company’s business objectives align with the social needs of the community, and develops initiatives that create value for both. Additionally, and critically, Shared Value looks at the entire ecosystem, recognising that no entity can solve an issue alone, but that interdependent role-players need to collaborate to address these issues together. It’s a more complex approach, but also provides more systemic solutions.

It’s been widely adopted by, for example:

Old Mutual’s Masisizane Fund, which has invested in over 170 small businesses
the Woolworths Farming for the Future programme, which has supported over 500 farmers
the Nestlé Creating Shared Value programme through which the company has invested the equivalent of over R4bn in more than 1 000 projects around the world ranging from sustainable agriculture to improving access to water and healthcare
Pick n Pay’s programme which reaches into education, health, food security, community development and sustainability and environmental initiatives

My own company, the V&A Waterfront, formally adopted a Shared Value Ecosystem strategy, and established SOLVE@Waterfront to show how the approach can work in practice. SOLVE offers a framework for collaboration between stakeholders from the private sector, government, academia, and civil society who are able to use the Waterfront neighbourhood as a ‘petri dish’ to develop and test solutions. Examples are access to employment opportunities, and addressing inequities in the food ecosystem and the oceans economy by leveraging technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Many more of South Africa’s blue chip corporates have bought into the shared value approach. These include Absa, Investec, Hollard, Sasol, Volkswagen, Tiger Brands, and FNB.

Over time, the CSI/social impact sector has evolved into a professional and mature space. Companies now have dedicated divisions, and many organisations are taking a systemic approach, working to understand the underlying issues, and collaborating to develop solutions. Although reporting remains a challenge, there is a noticeable shift from a “tick-box” mentality to genuine engagement.

STAYING CONNECTED

At the same time, it remains essential that grassroots organisations and community projects be involved. Typically, they have a deep understanding of specific needs and can deliver targeted solutions. They are often the first point of contact for community members, and are uniquely positioned to provide support where it’s needed.

And they fulfil a unique function in arresting the decline of our country’s moral fibre, a complex issue. Our long history of racial segregation and inequality has created deep social and economic divides, which in turn have contributed to a lack of social cohesion and a breakdown in moral values. I believe it it is crucial to sustain community centres and grassroots non-profits as they play their vital role in rebuilding social cohesion.

They need financial support: 78% of South African NPOs have an annual income of less than R1 million.

This may in part be because as the private sector focus shifts to larger, strategic partnerships, it may have left smaller grassroots organisations with fewer resources, in turn leading to an increase in NPO numbers as communities band together to address their challenges, with each getting a smaller slice of the pie. I would argue that corporates need to consider this, also incorporating and funding smaller, community-based and grassroots organisations as delivery partners. In so doing, corporates will also support job creation and stimulate localised economic resilience in areas that historically have been marginalised.

At the Waterfront, we have found what we consider to be an elegant mechanism for this which we call the Our Community Programme. Through this programme, we provide small grants for which our staff members – indeed, any member of the public – can apply. The intended use can be anything from renovating a community centre to supporting a child’s educational bursary. Effectively, this puts CSI into the hands of people who are closest to social challenges, with clear projects and funding to support them.

This was also the inspiration behind the evolution of our Busker’s Programme into a focused entrepreneurship and development programme through which buskers access skills development, music workshops and mentors/coaches. We are extremely proud that last month (April 2023) one of our buskers, Micaela Kleinsmith, won Apple TV+s’ inaugural “My Kind of Country” competition, a Reese Witherspoon production.

The recognition that ecosystems, societies, and economies are interconnected and require holistic solutions is an important step forward. And the rewards are great.

The post CSI was R11bn last year. But is business staying usefully connected to social need? first appeared on The Waterfront Story.

Review of The Waterfront Story by Peter de Tolly

Peter de Tolly — Mon, 01 May 2023 09:02:40 +0000

Cape Town’s former deputy city planner, Peter de Tolly, submitted the following review of The Waterfront Story (based on the role he played in the early years, his interests and his priorities). The nature of a book and the restrictions on space do not allow everything that happened to be included, so we are grateful for his efforts in expanding the story to include in the limitless world of cyberspace, where it is indexed by search engines for posterity. — Author

Generally: I have read The Waterfront Story and it tells an interesting story of a very special place. It contains a lot of information on the V&AW’s history and evolution as a rehabilitated place, and as a business. This it does discursively, in a chatty and visually appealing way. It clearly is designed to communicate to a non-academic audience. It largely steers clear of controversy. As such, it is not an urban history of the V&AW and its contexts – physical, institutional, cultural, and political – in any academic sense. Clearly, this it was not intended to be.

On the Structure: Given the attention that has been given to the organisation of the book, it is surprising that the book just ends precipitously, as opposed to discussing the possible futures based on the use of the unbuilt floor area.

Basis for my comments: The following comments/criticisms stem from my involvements as an active, ongoing participant, from my return from Toronto in 1980 to join the then City of Cape Town that July, through to when I was seconded in 1996 to the Cape Town 2004 Olympic Bid Company to prepare the Olympic Plan. During this time, together with various colleagues I was very involved with the planning for Granger Bay and with the many attempts made to convince central government to give the historic Victoria & Alfred waterfront area back to the city. My views and planning approach stem from my experience over seven years of coordinating four levels of government in planning the future of Toronto’s Central Waterfront.

Inevitably, my views and memories of the early days of Granger Bay and the V&AW will differ with yours, which I see as stemming from our very different roles.

Your book is your view of the waterfront story. I wish you had included more ‘story’. I think that the book would have been enriched if you had spread your interviewing (Author’s Preface) more widely. You outline the sequence of key events during the ‘80’s leading up to the launching of the new V&AW Company on 24 November, 1988. In between were some significant events and products. You briefly mention the City’s 1985 report The Development Potential of Cape Town’s Historic Waterfront on page 29, showing its cover. It was for its time an unusual document in the way it analysed the business potentials/implications of rehabilitating the historic waterfront. The report was not simply one produced by Council officials. It benefited from the active participation of The South African Property Owners association (SAPOA), the Federated Hotel Liquor and Catering Association of South Africa, the Fisheries Development Corporation and Irvin & Johnson. Surely, to bring people together from those organisations and from Council would yield rich oral history!

From the formation of the new company through 1989 and 1990, the demands on Council’s officials and on the V&AW’s planners, urban designers and other professionals was acute. Getting David Jack, Ken Sturgeon, myself and a few others together would be both revealing and entertaining about those times, what they demanded from us and how we achieved the results we did in what was an extraordinarily short amount of time?

Omissions in Milestones on the road to V&AW: This useful ‘snapshot’ section on pages 28 and 29, has omissions born of its abbreviated format.

1984: Your 1984 ‘box’ describes Mayor Sol Kreiner’s setting up a Mayoral Steering Committee “in the face of the stalling project”. The first meeting of this committee was on 5 September 1984. It was preceded by a meeting on 3 May 1984 which Mayor Sol Kreiner convened between City and SATS officials. That was followed by a lunch with the Minister of Transport and the General Manager of SATS. Mayor Kreiner was very persevering on the issue of the Victoria & Alfred Basins, and he had the full support of his planning and engineering officials. We all knew that we would need to continue to inform and persuade SATS that change was inevitable. The word ‘stalling’ does not convey what was actually happening at the time.

The Rating of State Properties Act created a new impetus for change as unused harbour and railway land in an urban area could be subject to paying rates.

1985: You show the cover of the City’s November 1985 report: The Development Potential of Cape Town’s Historic Waterfront, outlining the contents of this submission to the newly formed “Burggraaf Committee’. You completely neglect to say that it was a crucial input to that committee, eventually persuading Arie Burggraaf to recommend the rehabilitation of the Victoria And Alfred areas for new mixed-use development.

[Author: Arie Burggraaf and Fuzz Loubser (head of SATS Business Development Division) had considerable input into the book and read the drafts. They informed the focus I presented.]

The milestones report, drawing on expertise from SAPOA and other such organisations in the tourism industry, contained fully costed proposals. It took a very different approach from the Granger Bay proposals:

It realised that the real economic potential was utilisation of the historic harbour.
It could be done without negative impacts on the fishing and shipping industries.
Retention of the working harbour and heritage would be major contributors to a successful development

The outcome of this report deserves mention by you.

1982: For instance, 1982 was more than the Laingsburg floods in so far as Granger Bay is concerned. March 1982 saw the publication of the City’s report: Granger Bay Project Assessment.

This report methodically assessed the “Granger Bay Waterfront Development, Report 2, dated January 1981. It exhaustively examined the Granger Bay proposals contained in Report 2 and it discussed the Victoria Basin and the need for linkage to the CBD. To illustrate this potential, it showed a very imaginative UCT student scheme.

This report which was adopted by Council contained recommendations that were to inform all subsequent City participation in the planning for Granger Bay and the Victoria Basin areas. Recommendation 2.4 refers to long-term objectives that explicitly address the need for the Granger Bay and Victoria Basin areas to be linked to the western part of the central city. “The dockland should combine compatible commercial activities with residential and recreational activities to ensure a rich and diverse environment. For example, the small fishing boats in the Alfred Basin should remain to ensure that this part of the dockland remain a working harbour accessible to the public…”

Recommendation 2.5: “The Council should inform the Minister of Transport of the evident desirability of linking the Granger Basin area with the Central Business District by the rehabilitation of the Victoria Basin and land to the south, and that I be authorised to discuss this with officials of the South African Transport Services”.

Numerous meetings with SATS harbour staff ensued albeit with limited results because their official attitude at that time was that the Victoria Basin area was for port purposes. I had meetings with Brian (Maginot Line) Whitfield, the then Harbour Engineer, the dates of which are in my diaries of the time. Maginot Line was our nickname for Whitfield as he really believed that the forces of change could be held at bay. Arie Burggraaf was to prove him wrong.

The City’s 1982 Granger Bay Project Assessment report deserves to be slotted into your book.

1988: This was a momentous year.

February saw the newly formed Waterfront Working Group meeting.

You state that at a March meeting with Transnet, City Officials “wanted to drive the project”. That this was “turned down”. I think that you need to revisit Appendix 1A of the Milestones report which contains a chronology of waterfront development 1971-1985. The events of 1985 are more nuanced than your single statement.. A sequence of meetings was held between City Officials and SATS officials during the year. David Jack, Larry Aberman and I met with the Burggraaf Committee on 9 August.

In April I was invited to a SA Harbours Conference in Sun City to present a paper entitled: Redevelopment of Cape Town Harbour: A Two Continent Local Authority Viewpoint. This was very well received. It’s conclusions bear repeating for what they said at that time:

“Cape Town is now faced with some of the problems and opportunities of other western port cities. It has a mix of facilities developed over 300 years, in response to changing needs: sail, steam, passenger and break/bulk cargo, containers and piping of liquid bulk commodities. As the harbour has grown so has the city adjacent to it. With that growth and change has come the belief that urban waterfronts formerly committed to purely industrial use should be reclaimed for more diversified activities planned to attract people seeking recreation and entertainment as well as opportunities for distinctive residential environments.

“Granger Bay, Victoria Basin and the land that connects them to the Central Business District provide challenges and opportunities that need to be addressed and resolved now, drawing from the history and experience in South Africa as well as from overseas”.

1988 saw Rudi Basson take over as Port Manager and he brought a completely different mind-set to his predecessor.

In May, the then transport minister Elie Louw accepted Arie Burggraaf’s recommendations. These were:

Recreational use of water areas only at Pierhead
Flooding of lower Tank Farm should be considered
Endorsed proposed land uses for Pier Head area
Housing etc on Upper Tank Farm
Include Portswood Road strip
Use Dock Road areas to link City to Waterfront
Development of Granger Bay

According to you the Minister’s acceptance was with the “directive that development should start as soon as possible”. One has to wryly observe that it was a bizarre directive given government procrastination over many years.

The City had in 1988 acted proactively by already initiating a number of transport studies with the V&AW in mind. One dealing with the Power Station site and surrounds involved Hawkins, Hawkins & Osborn. The other was a Pre-Feasibility Study for a CBD-Waterfront Transit System in Cape Town. The City was also considering how to deal with the planning of the new Victoria & Alfred Waterfront areas, in terms of plan approvals, zoning and institutional arrangements. These actions are omitted by you.

1988 also saw the publication by the City of a couple of Cape Town Historical Walks publications. This one was designed to bring the public into the historic waterfront areas.

The new company, Victoria & Alfred Waterfront (Pty) Ltd. was formed in September and launched publicly on 24 November. All of this period is excellently covered in Rory Birkby’s The Making of Cape Town’s Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.

Waterfront 1.0: The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront becomes a reality

Thank you Arie Burggraaf as at least one of your three success factors recognises the contributions of the City Council: “City Council created new processes to realize the project …”

I once wrote in an article entitled Cape Town’s Central Waterfront, published in the May-June 1992 issue of Architecture SA: “The V&A did not just happen. Market forces did not magically transform the V&AW on their own. The V&AW happened because of a City Council-derived process that inspired the planning and design; because of up-front financial commitment by Transnet, because its management and Board understood what makes for successful waterfronts, and because the City Council has been co-operative and facilitative.”

During this time, the Cape Town City Council was a constant, very positive force: in the decision of the then central government to commercialise its ports and harbours, in the creation of the V&AW, in its early planning and development, and through setting up planning, financing and management arrangements that have stayed the course over the evolution of the V&AW until today. These contributions are readily available.

You would never know this from your book.

Timeline: This very useful graphic could add one very important contextual date: 11 September 2001. Following these attacks governments world-wide adopted measures to protect maritime transport and ports against terrorism. The Cape Town public could no longer enjoy its historic access to Duncan Dock. Thank goodness that the V&AW rehabilitation happened when it did.

Start small in the biggest possible way: There are omissions and inaccuracies in this section. For instance, you make no mention of the City’s Draft Contextual Framework for Cape Town’s Central Waterfront in September 1988. This report was adopted by the City Council on 1989-09-28.

This report was broad in its focus. The V&AW was put into the context of a larger geographic area, where opportunities and needs for change were identified. (Many of these disappeared after 11 September 2001, as mentioned above). It defined the land-use and transport contexts to the V&AW. It also contained a policy framework for the central waterfront and its sub-areas, starting with the V&AW. The following are the policies contained in the Contextual Framework report:

The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront area: Without this Council-adopted report and its sub-area policies, there would have been no basis for the new company to proceed with its planning, and for its first planning product, the V&AW Development Framework report. These policies guided the V&AW’s planners in the preparation of not only the Development Framework, but the Precinct Plans that then ensued. Also, the City’s planners and development control staff used these policies to evaluate the V&AW proposals. I do think that these policies should be encapsulated in one of your snap scans.

The late Ivor Prinsloo in his article entitled “The Persistence of Vision” in Aquapolis 3-4 2000, Cape Town where Africa’s two oceans meet, summed up a primary focus of the Contextual Framework. He wrote: “The City Council of Cape Town (CCC) published a Contextual Framework in 1989, which shapes the city in the greater context with the theme of an integration between mountain, city and sea.”

This section of the book focuses on ‘The Development Framework & Package of Plans’. This misconstrues the sequence of what actually happened. The Development Framework was preceded by the Package of Plans. It had to be because prior to the Package of Plans being adopted by the City Council, the new V&AW Company would have had to prepare some form of master plan in accordance with the then Town Planning Scheme and Provincial Planning Ordinance.

I know because I was there and was responsible for the development of the Package of Plans. Rory Birkby in his chapter ‘The Package of Plans and Heads of Agreement’ gets it right. Other than his “The Package of Plans was largely the work of the Deputy City Planner, Peter de Tolly….” I assume that the ‘largely’ was because I was assisted by colleagues in Council, and by Ken Sturgeon of MLH, but the basic concept of an inter-locking hierarchy of plans, giving predictability to the authorities and direction and flexibility to the land-owner and developer, was mine.

I developed the procedure as a result of the experience I had in Toronto. One aspect of this work was being part of the evolution of the planning for Harbourfront, a Federal Government predecessor to the V&A W. Toronto had a somewhat Byzantine zoning scheme (as did Cape Town) and I watched with great interest as Harbourfront’s planners wrestled with how to somehow break free of it. I applied lessons learnt.

Regarding the planning of the V&AW, I have written: “The solution was a new planning procedure, called the ‘Package of Plans. Following on from discussions with the Company’s planning and urban design consultants which resulted in an agreed-on way forward, I sent them a letter dated 1989-07-14, in which I wrote: “… that a package or hierarchy of plans needs to be developed as part of a Master Agreement between the City, the V&AW Company and SATS which will cover planning, servicing and financial matters. The key planning need is to meet the agreement condition of the SATS Act No. 65 of 1981; as well as to provide the V&AW Company the flexibility it needs operationally; to form the basis for the marketing, lease or sale of land by the Company; and to form a set of management tools by which the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront area will be planned, developed and managed over time.”

The procedure was designed to have broader applicability to state land holdings elsewhere. ‘This approach was designed to ensure that development of state land, be it either for operational or commercial purposes, would be positively integrated into the structure and form of the adjacent city, and into its management. It sought to reconcile the key interests of each of the public and private sectors (the landowner, the local authority, prospective investors and developers, and the public generally) It created a set of tools by which land could be allocated, marketed, leased, sold and managed by government on the basis of agreed objectives and policies; by which land could be integrated legally and physically into the adjoining municipality; and by which the private sectors interest and involvement would be attracted and creatively focused.”

Many involved with the V&AW over the years have commented on how essential the procedure was to the V&W’s success; Piet van Zyl and Neil Schwartz are only two examples.

Your book refers to the Planned Urban Development (PUD) system, and to Cardiff Bay, Wales. “In the USA, major projects follow a Planned Urban Development (PUD system, and the Waterfront modelled its approach on that.” It did not. I drew no inspiration from PUD precedent, nor from Cardiff, of which I was unaware.

[Author: David Jack was very aware of the overseas precedents and MLH Architects & Planners was appointed to pursue an alternative to a Master Plan. The V&AW Development Framework was based on Cardiff Bay’s. I assumed that you would have known about wider overseas precedents but it is to your credit that you drove your process based on your experience in Toronto. The last major development in Cape Town’s CBD was the Foreshore which had a Master Plan — with all its shortcomings. The City refers to these shortcomings in the Preliminary Comments on the Draft Report: V&AW Development Framework.]

You write: “Peter de Tolly…worked with Ken Sturgeon at MLH Architects & Planners. Using what was happening overseas, they evolved their own system which De Tolly named the Package of Plans Process.”

This is not true. I drew up the Package of Plans, with its components – Contextual Framework, Development Framework, Precinct Plans, and Site Development Plans, for each of which I outlined the contents. I sent Ken letters containing my thoughts over some months and we worked through what he thought would work for the V&AW, as I did, with my colleagues for the city. You must remember that the City early on set up an Inter-Departmental (Peter Lever and Mike Marsden, representing the finance and engineering specialisms) Waterfront Working Group which I chaired, and also a Waterfront Planning Group in the Town Planning Branch (when I was Director of Planning). Without this genuinely collegiate approach in difficult circumstances, I doubt that we would have been able to move as quickly as we did. MLH made a really significant contribution to the Package of Plans procedure with the diagram they developed, which you use on page 36, as well as with the ongoing suggestions and criticisms that I received. There were many in the Town Planning Branch who contributed, notably Larry Aberman.

You may wish to refer to the paper I wrote for SAPOA, published in SAPOA NEWS December 1991, entitled Optimising government-owned land. In it you will find my explanation of why the procedure was developed and how it is seen to be applied.

You remark on how the Package of Plans procedure has been used for other developments. This is very much the case, and the procedure has now been incorporated into both the City of Cape Town’s and the Western Cape Government’s regulatory schemes, to be a mandatory requirement for certain types of developments.

As an amusing aside on the pervasiveness of the P of P process, an architect has been retained to design a new family house up in the vineyards overlooking the Groot Drakenstein Mountains. Responding to the plans submission, the Winelands Municipality has asked for a Site Development Plan!

At the time in 1989, we argued that “Properly undertaken the ‘Package of Plans’ approach should provide both strategic direction and operational flexibility, and result in development of quality and appropriateness, which takes full account of its special location, conditions, environment and history, and which becomes integrated over time into its adjoining city.”

The bulk of your book from ‘Making it happen’ could be said to show that the above statement has been realised.

Other documents provided by Peter de Tolly:

2009: Cape Town’s central waterfront: past, present, future: challenge and change — Peter de Tolly

April 1994: Mike Smuts letter

October 1990: A Proposed Approach to the Planning and Development of Government Owned Land by the City Of Cape Town

September 1989: Final Comments on the Draft Report: Victoria & Alfred Waterfront Development Framework

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Cruise liners flock to Cape Town

Wesgro — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 16:46:46 +0000

Cape Town gears up to welcome 7,000 passengers and crew at the Cape Town Cruise Terminal, which is managed by the V&A Waterfront, this weekend.

On the 24th of February, the Costa Deliziosa arrived in the Port of Cape Town with 1,554 passengers, as part of their 115-day roundtrip itinerary to Rome

On 25 February the port welcomes the Artania, which will arrive with 1,024 passengers from East London before heading on a 10-day voyage to Dakar

MSC Sinfonia is arriving on the same day, bringing 1,848 passengers from Walvis Bay before departing on a 2-day “cruise to nowhere” from Cape Town

This season so far (October – End Jan) has already seen a great number of ships arriving, with almost 75,000 passengers passing through the port of Cape Town to date.

The cruise sector holds a strong economic significance for Cape Town, which looks forward to welcoming more visitors to our shores for the remainder of this bumper season.

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A response to Tony Jackman’s Daily Maverick rant

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 19:57:54 +0000

Daily Maverick published a story by Tony Jackman titled “WHEN CHARACTER DIES: V&A Waterfront: consuming itself, a greedy bite at a time“.

“It’s the Monaco of Cape Town, a playground for the super-rich in a city infamously neglectful of its poor. Cut off, more than ever, from the city of which it is supposedly a part, it has become obsessed with itself and its advancement, the sybarite at the dinner table, the narcissist you once thought you knew. It’s time to hit pause.”

Let’s start with what the V&A’s initial aims were, way back in 1989. Firstly, it was to seamlessly reconnect the city to the sea — to the CBD at the southern side and residential Green Point at the western side. It’s doing that pretty well.

Secondly, the V&A was to respond to market demands but be responsible for its built heritage. It was not planned as a static and sacred memorial, with polite cobwebs to remind you of that.

And thirdly, it had to be profitable. (Today, it is owned by of the Government Employees Pension Fund with more than 1.2 million active members and over 490 000 pensioners and beneficiaries — who enjoy above average returns on their investment. It has become the most valuable property on the African continent.)

No-one had any qualms about those aims. But these are facts that Tony Jackman cannot grasp and what can only be called a loquacious rant was published by Daily Maverick. It’s almost two years to the day since Branko Brkic, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Maverick, had to publish an apology to readers for the fictional story by Jacques Pauw accusing the V&A of mistreatment. Daily Maverick has failed again.

Jackman’s writing seems inspired by Alice in Wonderland:

“How could there be so much of everything? How do you find your way any more? Any focus has long perished; in its place, a perplexing maze of brick, steel and glass, punctuated with bobbing boats with their skippers touting for your custom, almost everything designed to enthral and inspire. But collectively its effect is to overwhelm and confuse.”
Jackman is obviously more at home in Cradock than he is in Cape Town. Cape Town is a thriving, bustling city. And age brings its own challenges, like accepting that the only constant in this world is change, which happens even faster in retail spaces.

“Everything is expensive. The clothes are expensive… even the Coke.” This is nonsense. Food & beverage chains do not have separate pricing for the V&A. And if Jackman can’t afford where wealthy tourists spend their money, there’s always Mr Price V&A. “The Cape Wheel is moving, making way for a piazza to accommodate public transport.” Not correct. Cape Wheel was relocated to reduce congestion in that part of the V&A, and certainly not for public transport. There are more factual faux pas.

Jackman’s attacks on the V&A are not new and go back 33 years — the V&A is not 31 years old as Jackman states — when he wrote a scathing column after his wife complained about costs and service. @GordonKling, Cape Times editor at the time, will probably remember the incident since he became involved.

Jackman muddles on at length about the old Food Market in the old Electric Light & Power Station which is being replaced by a Time Out Food Market. The Food Market’s lease had come to an end. The operator was responsible for his traders. It catered for a mish mash of traders and two years ago someone in the V&A’s retail section said that, based on what it had learned from the Watershed, the company would have managed it better. It had become a little seedy and tired. So when a globally-admired brand made an offer, it was a no-brainer. Jackman’s conclusion seems to be that Time Out should be given a different location, while he decries new development, and that existing traders should still be accommodated.

Sure, the V&A is not everybody’s cup of tea and if there is an informed and intelligent criticism to be made, it should probably focus on crass consumerism and all malls should be the focus of that criticism. The real problem is society but Jackman can’t get off his three-decade-old hobby horse long enough to mention that the V&A is the greenest property on the African continent, or give any level of support for praiseworthy food initiatives like Makers Landing (which Jackman, as Daily Maverick’s food editor, should be applauding). The V&A is trying very hard to make a difference — in the right direction — points Jackman is blind to.

“Go away from the Waterfront for five minutes and when you return there’ll be another new development, another renovation, another innovation. Something will be gone, something new will be coming soon, all manner of other things will be pending.”
This is from an author who shared his endeavours, his new kitchen windows, his new interiors, his revamped patio, and his changes to the toilet and passages on Facebook.

The Daily Maverick article is pure click bait. It’s unprofessional drivel. It’s self-indulgent bile wrapped in loquacity. Tony Jackman should stick to writing cook books.

The post A response to Tony Jackman’s Daily Maverick rant first appeared on The Waterfront Story.

Is it time to think about commuter cable cars?

admin — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 07:55:17 +0000

It’s time to think out of the box

A new cable car system for commuters in Paris will be introduced in 2025.

More and more cities worldwide have already introduced cable car systems for commuters.

The V&A Waterfront has set a target of achieving 60% of all visitors arriving by public transport or non-vehicular means by 2040. It and the city will need to think out of the box to achieve that.

Other pages worth visiting:

The rise of the urban cable car BBC Future

Cable cars: An economically viable public transport system in #AmLat cities? World Bank

11 urban gondolas changing the way people move Curbed

Origins of Cape Town’s public transport

It was the property developers of Cape Town suburbs like Gardens, Oranjezicht, Tamboerskloof and Camps Bay who, in the 1800s, started the city’s first public transport systems. It was the only way to sell homes to people far from where they worked and did their shopping

In many cases these were just horse-drawn carriages. (Road signs still exist prohibiting horse-drawn carriages on certain roads in the hilly city bowl suburbs.) The first car only arrived in South Africa in 1896 in Port Elizabeth and cars only became freely available early in the 20th century.

The first of the two networks established was a horsecar network, which opened in 1863. In about 1896, it was converted to electrical operation. From 1935, it was gradually replaced by trolleybuses or Trackless trams. It finally closed on 28 January 1939.

The other network opened in 1901, and was a suburban tramway linking Burnside Road in Tamboerskloof with Camps Bay and Sea Point. It was powered by electricity, and was in operation until 1930.

How will the V&A achieve its goals?

Before the V&A Waterfront started in 1989, at the very first negotiations with the City Council, the City wanted the Waterfront to complete the unfinished freeway in exchange for development rights. It wasn’t a sensible proposal — it didn’t quantify development rights and would have entailed a huge initial expenditure before the Waterfront had even started to be able to demonstrate its value.

V&AW appointed Hawkins Hawkins & Osborne (H2O) as its traffic engineers. They had also been appointed by the City and were responsible for the section which surrounded the Waterfront — and knew it extremely well. They were able to quantify the maximum traffic that the existing road network into the Waterfront could bear. And that could be translated into the maximum bulk of buildings which could be constructed at the Waterfront.

The Waterfront’s agreement with the city left the final bulk to be determined at a future date. It would be revised on the basis of traffic — the introduction of public transport and changes in traffic patterns and modes — and the use of municipal services.

The biggest impact on Cape Town’s user-friendliness for a long time was the introduction of the MyCiti bus service, which has provided approximately 134 million passenger trips since its launch in May 2010 until December 2021.

The post Is it time to think about commuter cable cars? first appeared on The Waterfront Story.

Stories about James Rouse worth reading

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 09:08:50 +0000

INTERVIEW WITH JAMES ROUSE IN COLUMBIA, USA. PUBLISHED IN THE WATERFRONT REVIEW, Spring 1992, BY CARL MOMBERG

James Rouse was chairman of the Enterprise Foundation & Enterprise Development Co. based in Columbia, Maryland, USA. His projects set the benchmark for development at Cape Town’s Waterfront. His story is an inspiration… and if South Africans are looking for the attractive face of capitalism, here is one outstanding example.

‘Our projects flow from thoughtful, creative efforts to provide authentic responses to the needs and yearnings of the people they serve… to make life better for people and their communities. This is the surest way to create long term values.’ — James W Rouse

James Rouse has been the driving force behind several of the most significant developments in the urbanisation of America. With every decade, Rouse introduced a new concept to the nation, each embraced widely by the American public. In the late 1950’s the Rouse Company pioneered the large enclosed shopping mall. In the 1960’s, Rouse believed that proper planning could create the perfect city and integrated suburban community. He built Columbia, Maryland as proof. The 1970’s brought a burst of urban revitalisation spurred by the bright and exciting ‘festival marketplace.’ And finally, in the ’80s and ’90s, Rouse has dedicated his years of expertise and knowledge to an effort to provide decent affordable housing for the nation’s poor.

Rouse was born in 1914 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Orphaned at 16, he went to Baltimore to ‘seek his fortune.’ During the depression he parked cars during the day to pay for University of Maryland law classes at night. While in school, a 1934 clerkship at the federal Housing Administration very likely sparked the ideas with which Rouse would later change the nation.

In 1939 Jim Rouse founded The Rouse Company, a mortgage banking firm that financed housing and commercial property. Today it is the largest publicly-held real estate development company in the USA.
In the latter half of the 1940’s he was already deeply involved in the betterment of Baltimore. His dedication to the rehabilitation of the city’s slums led to an appointment to president Eisenhower’s 1953 Task Force on Housing.

It was here that Rouse is credited with introducing the phrase ‘urban renewal’ to the American vocabulary, and it was from here that he began his attempt to achieve it.

During the same period, Rouse made his fortune as one of the pioneers of the shopping mall. He is credited with the first use of the word ‘mall’ to describe the ‘suburban substitute for downtown.’
He built the first covered shopping mall; he introduced America to the convenience and the warm, lively community atmosphere that could be found in a place to shop; and was the first to reflect regional and cultural motifs in architecture and decor. Cherry HillMall in New Jersey was so well received that it inspired the town to change its name to match!

The 1960’s found Rouse increasingly concerned with the flight from the cities and the resulting haphazard growth and development of suburbs and other outlying areas. ‘Our cities grow by sheer chance, by accident, by the whim of the private developer and public agencies. By this irrational process, non communities are born, formless places without order, beauty or reason, with no visible respect for either people or the land.’

In Columbia, Maryland, he hoped to create the most harmonious response possible to the problems of urban decay and suburban sprawl. The city was assembled by the Rouse Company in the early ’60s on 15,000 acres of farmland to ‘bring a sense of order to the placeless suburban landscape and to provide former city dwellers with green suburban amenities.’ A 1988 article in The Washington Post notes that there is a certain irony – the man whose greatest fame derives from the ‘urban visionary’ marketplaces in the ’70s and ’80s was clearly a suburban realist.

Rouse regards Columbia as his greatest achievement, which is surprising since it is the very antithesis of what he is best known for-the big inner-city, festival marketplaces. The hallmark of Columbia has always been its openness to people of all ethnic and socio economic backgrounds, although – on the downside, – its low income goals have not been met.

The ‘very suburbanisation that Rouse had capitalised on in the 1950’s was the cause of his concern in the ’70’s. Worried that cities were being abandoned, he embarked on a new phase of urban development with the ‘festival market place.’ With a blend of shops, restaurants, kiosks, pushcarts, music and entertainment, Rouse hoped they would bring people, business and jobs back to the cities and, above all, provide the liveliness of the old-fashioned marketplace that had once been the heart of every urban area.

The impact of these ‘festival marketplaces’ which have brought Rouse lasting fame is easy to underestimate if one forgets the dismal city centre prospects before Rouse arrived with his big idea. At the time, neither conventional developers nor financial institutions were interested in mixed-use downtown projects until Faneuil Hall in Boston (1976) and then Harborplace in Baltimore (1980) turned the situation around.

Today Faneuil Hall attracts some 16 million visitors a year to the Boston city centre. The marketplace has been enlarged and has acted as a catalyst, stimulating new development and other property owners in the area to restore and revitalise their buildings. Baltimore used to be described as ‘the armpit of America.’ It had few hotels or fine restaurants and little life downtown — especially at night.

When Harborplace opened, 150,000 visitors came on the first day, 14 million that first year. Harborplace is credited with being the catalyst in a critical mass of attractions that transformed the city centre.

Today, Inner Harbor draws more than 25 million people annually — including 7,5 million tourists in a city where there was no tourist industry before.

In 1973, three young women approached Rouse for help in rehabilitating apartments for the poor. He turned them down, saying they needed a larger programme to make an impact. Eventually, their determination won him over and their project provided the inspiration for the Enterprise Foundation.

Since 1982, Rouse has devoted himself fully to the Foundation, which has worked with tenant activists, churches, block associations and other non-profit neighbourhood groups in over 30 cities to help build or renovate over 14,000 housing units.

Aware that it takes more than shelter to revitalise a neighbourhood, Enterprise employees have gone beyond simply financing and advising these grass-roots organisations.

Enterprise has linked up residents to support services — from home maintenance to chequebook balancing. Employees in Baltimore are involved in literacy and family counselling programmes, while another group within Rouse’s organisation, Enterprise Jobs, has provided 16,000 jobs for unemployed men and women in 12 cities and has established a mentoring programme, recruiting over 80 volunteers to work one-on-one with the people placed.

Smithsonian Magazine — James W. Rouse’s Legacy of Better Living Through Design

The Washington Post — Rouse beyond Columbia and Waterfronts

YouTube — Enterprise Founder James W. Rouse Receives Medal of Freedom, 1995

Enterprise Community Partners — The Foundation

The post Stories about James Rouse worth reading first appeared on The Waterfront Story.

Bertie’s Landing

admin — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 02:01:46 +0000

Bertie Reed had been brought to the V&A’s Dock House offices in August 1989 by Geoff Grylls soon after the veteran and legendary yachtsman returned from Newport, Rhode Island in the USA. Bertie had seen what he wanted — a quayside pub and restaurant at the V&A Waterfront.

Bertie’s Landing opened in September 1990 alongside the Clock Tower where the Robben Island Gateway is today and was the first new-build project at the V&A Waterfront.

All New Gallery

These photos were taken soon after Bertie’s opened — so they are over 30 years old and the partygoers shown here are 50–60 years old today. Do you recognise anyone? Click on any image to open the larger slideshow.

Bertie’s Landing followed in the footsteps of Ferryman’s Tavern to become an instant Waterfront success. It quickly became SA Breweries second-best outlet in South Africa, with only Quay Four selling more beer when it opened a few months later.

Bertie’s was a destination in its own right, because there was no bridge linking it to the main Pierhead precinct of the Waterfront. You either used the Penny Ferry across The Cut or drove there.

Bertie’s landing was liquidated in about 1993 and sold, to reopen as Bertie’s Big Easy. It never regained its former glory days and was sold again, and closed forever soon after.

Bertie had moved on to open Bertie’s Mooring in Gordon’s Bay but the memory of Bertie’s Landing remains for many.

The post Bertie’s Landing first appeared on The Waterfront Story.