As a prelude to the Inner-City Summit set to take place early next month, on Tuesday the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) led members of the media on an inner-city walkabout to gauge the city’s progress in sprucing up the CBD.
The JDA oversees regeneration of the city, and CEO Lael Bethlehem said the summit will give a big push to inner-city development.
”The summit will bring together the city, the private sector and the community sector … It’s about getting people to make commitments, so we don’t have to talk about the inner city for the rest of our lives,” she said.
Guiding the media through pockets of regeneration in the city centre, Bethlehem pointed out the upgrading of urban environments that has been taking place. But along with the positive, she admitted the city does have its share of problem areas.
Along Commissioner Street, the Avril Malan building is something the city calls a ”bad” building or a ”sinkhole”. Originally an office block for a financial institution, it was ”hijacked” by a syndicate a few years ago, said Martin New, of the Inner City Task Force — a subsidiary of the city of Johannesburg responsible for coordinating and managing the implementation of municipal services in the inner city’s different regions.
Since then, the estimated 300 illegal residents have been paying monthly rentals to this syndicate for pitiful accommodation with no water, lights or sanitation.
The building is dark and putrid. Garbage and raw sewage runs along the outside, and the first two floors are used as a make-shift toilet area, since the structure was built with only six toilets per floor. ”It was never designed for this … it is decaying, and there is a collapse of infrastructure,” New said.
We stepped over sheets of broken glass on the third floor, where a resident showed us his office-sized room with nothing but a mattress on the floor.
New said the building is currently under liquidation, but since many of these bad buildings are privately owned, it often takes a significant amount of time for the city to secure it under the law.
The city has already closed more than 200 bad buildings for renovation. Avril Malan is also earmarked for eventual redevelopment, after the residents are moved.
On criticism from some sectors that the city does not care about housing the ultra-poor who often cannot afford sufficient accommodation, Bethlehem said: ”It’s not that we don’t want poor people in the inner city; we want people in the city in decent circumstances.”
The current residents of Avril Malan will be offered other emergency accommodation after they are evicted, New said.
Apart from the building on Commissioner Street, the remainder of the walkabout focused on positive inner-city developments spearheaded by the JDA.
In February, the Mail & Guardian Online went walking through the city with Bethlehem to assess the JDA’s plans for redevelopment. Now, two months later, the proposed changes are visibly under way.
There is ongoing construction in Newtown; Transport House under the M1 highway is being converted into sectional-title housing, a boutique hotel, a cinema and a gym; and on Central Place opposite Mary Fitzgerald Square, four or five existing sites will be demolished and remade into commercial and residential space.
Nearby, the redevelopment and transition of Turbine Hall into the new global head offices for AngloGold Ashanti is almost complete; they are set to move in a few weeks’ time.
Upper-level housing complexes such as the Franklin and Mapungubwe are being snapped up in the inner city, despite their price tags of more than R1-million for a studio apartment.
And in the high court precinct, on Pritchard Street, the sidewalk upgrade has started with new paving blocks being laid. The entire facade of the area is set to change, with wider pavements, better lighting and greater pedestrian access.
Surrounding buildings have been renovated to accommodate the lawyers frequenting the area. The Johannesburg City Law Library will soon move into the Pitje Chambers building, and more upgrades are planned up towards the Fashion District, where the construction of the Fashion Kapital Square and model ramp is under way.
Bethlehem said that although the JDA cannot remake the entire city, it chooses projects that create ripple effects in the surrounding areas. It prompts more people to invest in the city by acting as a ”catalyst” for redevelopment, she added.