Western Cape environment minister Tasneem Essop will decide on the rezoning of the Green Point Stadium in January, Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool said on Friday.
She will decide on the City of Cape Town’s application for rezoning the stadium precinct from ”public open space” to ”community facilities” by the end of the first week in January, according to Rasool’s statement.
This was agreed to on Friday following meetings between legal and technical experts from the Western Cape provincial government and the City of Cape Town.
Essop also needs to decide on appeals against the granting of authorisation, in terms of the Environment Conservation Act, for the stadium, urban park and associated infrastructure.
If Essop grants the rezoning, Cape Town’s municipal council then has to determine the city’s application for consent to build the stadium as well as an electrical substation.
If the council gives its approval for the construction, objectors could then appeal to Essop.
Rasool said the Western Cape government will ensure the city’s ”complex and interrelated” applications are dealt with as ”lawfully and expeditiously as possible”.
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille said she regretted that province had failed to meet a December 20 deadline to make the rezoning decisions. ”This [rezoning] decision is now extremely urgent, if we are to avoid undue delays in the preparations for 2010,” she wrote in a statement.
The province previously claimed that a bungle by the city in the approvals process had threatened the already tight timetable for construction of the R2,9-billion project.
Zille has said there was nothing stopping Essop from making a decision on the city’s rezoning application. It appeared that the province’s motive was to try to force the city to agree to the establishment of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) in which it could have joint control of the 2010 project.
The mayor said the city had no problem with working jointly with the province, but could not agree to a separate SPV because the National Treasury, Fifa and the local organising committee had entered into contracts with cities, not provinces, for 2010. — Sapa