Developers in Rosebank should be encouraged to go residential

There's no obvious recession in Rosebank. The Johannesburg suburb is rapidly becoming the city's third high-rise business centre after Sandton and the original CBD, as SA's biggest developers prepare for the launch of Gautrain and the city's bus rapid transit system next year.

But the recession does have some effect. It is one of the reasons developers have either abandoned or avoided building the high-rise, high-density blocks of flats that would ensure Rosebank remains the most successful city environment in Gauteng.

Rosebank has the street life the Sandton CBD can never achieve, and the authentic urbanism of global cities that manufactured environments such as Melrose Arch and Cape Town's Century City will always lack. Several thousand high-rise flats would secure it as the region's most popular place to live, work and play and entrench the sustainability of Gautrain and its retail component.

Old Mutual is the most enthusiastic participant in the Gautrain project, with megadevelopments connected to stations at Rosebank, Sandton CBD and Midrand. Old Mutual Investments Group Property Investments (Omigpi) CEO Ben Kodisang has nailed his flag to the mixed-use urban mast, in his plan to become SA's biggest property asset manager with a R100bn portfolio.

WHAT IT MEANS Recession has caused a lack of balance Prohibition on high-rise is a problem

Yet Omigpi has canned its proposed residential development connected to the Zone at the corner of Tyrwhitt and Cradock avenues. "We can't do it profitably in the recession," says regional development manager Debbie Caplin. "We could if we were allowed to build a 30-storey high rise, but we can't."

Omigpi says it is unable to because the local civic Rosebank Action Group (Rag) is opposing large-scale high-rise development. Rag's Judith Briggs says it is opposed to "monolithic slabs" of buildings creating a "canyon" - but it doesn't oppose properly staggered high-rise development. Elsewhere in the world, planners have encouraged the densest and highest development to make sure mass transit systems are sustainable.

A third reason for the lack of residential construction is that Old Mutual and other major developers Investec, Standard Bank and Tiber are mainly commercial developers, with little interest or feel for residential.

Listed property fund Hyprop and developer Intaprop recently bought Nedbank Gardens in Bath Avenue from Old Mutual. It's an office park that is ideal for residential conversion.

Exclusive business - Buildings near the Gautrain station are likely to be reserved for commercial purposes only

Intaprop's Tim Middleton says it hasn't excluded residential. "But it's not a good idea to have a residential development that is isolated from other residential developments, which would be the case at Nedbank Gardens."

Hyprop would be interested only in a hotel. It wants to support the prime Rosebank property, the mall over the road from Nedbank Gardens. So it's probable that tenant parking and other non retail activities would be moved to the new purchase, so Hyprop can expand its retail space in the mall.

Hyprop has also bought Cradock Heights, a 5 000 m² office building north of Rosebank Mall on Cradock and Tyrwhitt avenues. It was designed by the son of the noted Johannesburg architect Harold le Roith. Probably the most beautiful commercial one in the suburb, it could be converted for residential use. However, there's a good chance that Hyprop will eventually demolish it to expand the mall.

"It's a pity that Rosebank's revival is taking place in the middle of a recession," says Kagiso Urban Management's Anne Steffny, who runs the Rosebank management district (RMD) that ensures the safety and operation of the node's public spaces. "Developers just can't make residential work at the moment."

Which highlights the biggest flaw in the suburb's regeneration. As usual, developers are narrowly concentrated on their own properties and their immediate returns. City planning authorities with foresight would have known this would happen, and planned for it through a detailed, integrated development plan that ensure d the right mix, size and density of uses. It would have crossed private property boundaries and have factored in the long-term future.

By building residential now, the municipality and owners could have ensured the long-term sustainability of the mass transit system and surrounding commercial activity. It would also have made Rosebank an even more satisfying place to visit, do business in or live in.

The authorities can make that happen with incentives for the big developers, like extra height and commercial space if they include residential units in their development.

Or they could punish them by reducing height and space if they don't.

One developer who wants to be anonymous has bought 20 Tyrwhitt Avenue to build residential accommodation. He would like to build more than he is allowed to by the city planning scheme. "Rosebank needs 3 000 or 4 000 residential units in Tyrwhitt Avenue, and 1 000 more elsewhere if it is to reach its full potential," he says.

"But we don't have a development plan that will make that happen."

Steffny says the council, the RMD and the property owners have agreed to do an integrated plan "with a strong residential component, and the big property developers support that".

But it seems they will support that being done by other developers in lower Rosebank near Jan Smuts Avenue, while their prime properties close to the Gautrain station remain purely commercial.

By Ian Fife via