Durban North residents and environmentalists say they will fight the eThekwini council all the way to the high court to stop the construction of a controversial new residential property and hotel development on environmentally sensitive coastal land. Photo: Oceans Alive Conservation Trust
Durban North residents and environmentalists say they will fight the eThekwini council all the way to the high court to stop the construction of a controversial new residential property and hotel development on environmentally sensitive coastal land.
This comes after developer Gavin Strydom, the director of Beachwood Investments, announced last week that the municipality had given the R3 billion Beachwood development the green light by dismissing the residents’ appeal against the approval of the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (Spluma) application for the development.
“This is another significant milestone for the planned low-density development and follows the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government also granting environmental approval in 2021 following a three-year development application process that included comprehensive public participation with interested and affected parties,” Strydom said.
He said the development of the privately-owned former Beachwood Golf Course would create “significant benefits” for the metro and province, including creating 1 500 direct jobs at a time when KwaZulu-Natal’s expanded unemployment rate is above 50%.
The development of the 430 000 square metre site, next to Virginia Airport in the D’Moss environmental zone, has been identified along with the latter among a list of R44.5 billion worth of future “catalytic projects”, including Durban Film City and Centrum.
Residents and environmental activists, who organised themselves as The Friends of Beachwood, have vehemently opposed the development which they say will destroy the sensitive coastal wetland of mangroves that serves as a sponge during heavy rainfall.
An online poll conducted by the group on 10 December showed that of 1 370 responses gathered 96.5% of residents are opposed to the development, with most respondents also saying they would approve of the group taking the municipality to court to halt it. Residents are also opposed to the redevelopment of Virginia Airport.
Friends of Beachwood representative Angela Wilson said the public outcry against the development had been “massive” yet the city and developers had not engaged with the community.
“In the months preceding this decision, ratepayers have had to hold their own public meetings and made their concerns known through a petition with close on 3 000 signatures,” Wilson said.
The Beachwood development plan includes the construction of an up to 280-bed hotel within 100m of the high-water mark of the sea, a series of three-storey “drive-up apartments” and six-storey units on the northern part of the site.
Strydom said the footprint of all the buildings, roads and pavements to be developed covered approximately 23% of the property “signifying a low-density development”. He said the company had allocated millions of rand to upgrade the natural landscape, as well as infrastructure, including roads and stormwater drains.
“It will also see the extensive rehabilitation of the ecological assets on the site, which have become severely degraded over the past few years. This includes the contamination of the mangroves by the polluted stormwater running off the neighbouring M4 highway, as well as the severe erosion of the sand dunes and the thinning out of the dune forests as a result of unmonitored public parking and illegal dwellers on the property,” Strydom said.
He said the plans included building sand filter-beds to treat the M4 stormwater before it flows into the mangroves, relocating the carpark and illegal dwellers, as well as planting more than 1.7km of woody tree species to protect the fragile milkwoods on the dunes.
“As a result, the development will create a much-improved ecological environment, which will greatly benefit the flora and fauna on the site. Surrounding communities will also benefit from the infrastructure upgrades,” he said.
“Beachwood Investment is extremely proud of the final, approved development plans, which incorporated the many inputs received from interested and affected parties and which will not only dramatically enhance the ecological value of the site but will also attract investment and create significant employment opportunities.
“We look forward to now turning our focus towards delivering this world-class development.”
Wilson said almost 1 000 formal objections to the rezoning application had been submitted
“highlighting real and valid concerns around this development”.
“Not one of these concerns has been acknowledged or addressed, making a complete mockery of the public participation process,” Wilson said.
“The city’s decision does not provide reasons and, as a result, Friends of Beachwood and other parties are calling for substantive reasons to be provided, following which it is likely that the matter will progress to the high court, a process that will take a number of years to conclude.
“It falls on the shoulders of ratepayers, yet again, to counter such irresponsible approvals and ensure the sustainability of our environment.”
Wilson said major issues not adequately resolved by the developer included:
• Sewerage: By the city’s own admission in its record of approval the development cannot take place without substantive upgrades of the dysfunctional Northern Wastewater Treatment Works which has had a negative effect on tourism.
• Traffic: Approvals around the road infrastructure are not in place — the impact of 1 000
additional vehicles per day has not been addressed.
• Water: Supply issues in the area have not been resolved.
• Virginia Airport: The valuable emergency lung that brought in and dispersed supplies across the city during the 2021 riots and the 2022 floods neighbours the development. No approvals from the Civil Aviation Authority are in place. A six-storey apartment has been planned adjacent to the emergency helicopter facilities, while double and triple-storey drive-up apartment blocks will be in the flight path.
• The Beachwood Mangroves: The area, declared a national monument due to its critical environmental role, lies downstream. The upper end of the mangroves are struggling as a result of excessive run-off and silt from Durban North, and substantial parts of Beachwood will be hardened, removing the “sponge” and creating additional run-off directly to the mangroves in an “environmental catastrophe in the making”.
In addition she said 42 hectares of invaluable D’Moss environmental corridors would be “swept aside”.
“Durban will never get that back. Despite the developer’s renders showing a proliferation
of green roofs, this development is not low impact. The hotel portion of the
development includes excavations for a super-basement, some 30 ha in extent — six rugby
fields worth of basement — in a low-lying back-of-dune coastal belt with a high water table
and filled with milkwoods. It will obliterate this landscape as we know it,” Wilson said.
She said it seemed the community would be sacrificing a “much-loved recreational and environmental asset for the sake of an exclusive, inaccessible housing estate and private developer gain alone”.
“Real land rights cannot be removed through the Spluma process. There is a
praedial servitude over this whole piece of land restricting its use to recreation, making
it available to the community and the whole city.
“It cannot be removed through a
planning process as has been done in this case,” Wilson said.
“If you are taking away ratepayers’ access to recreational facilities, you need to compensate them accordingly. This same matter was taken on review to the high court prior to the current developer purchasing the land and the matter was dismissed, with costs, before even reaching court — the praedial servitude upheld and the previous attempt at rezoning dismissed in its entirety.”
“Friends of Beachwood are confident that sense will prevail, yet again, at high court level and look forward to a more suitable development outcome for this area. It has potential for a world-class recreational and tourism facility that does not fly in the face of environmental imperatives and community aspirations,” Wilson said.
eThekwini Metro spokesperson Gugu Sisilana confirmed this week that the city had approved the Beachwood Development on 24 July 2023.
”The matter was since taken on appeal. The appeal was heard and dismissed on 21 November 2023. The decision was based on sound planning grounds and specialist work provided by the developer,” Sisilana said.