Development threatens valley’s untold story - cleric

A bid to build a three-storey shopping and office complex on Constantia Main Road has drawn opposition from a civic group, environmentalists and a church rector.

The public has until Monday June 10 to comment on the application by the Richard Harris Family Trust, the owners of 89 Constantia Main Road, to subdivide a 3800m² portion of erf 2133, rezone it from single-residential to commercial use and deviate from a municipal spatial plan emphasising the site’s value as an open space.

The application says the site, which lies between Chardonnay Deli and High Constantia Shopping Centre, is well positioned for the development that would effectively be “completing an existing commercial precinct”.

The proposed development, according to the application, will have two levels of semi-basement parking and a rooftop level with an extruded box of additional potential leasable space. The ground floor area will have office space with smaller boxes for potential retail stores.

According to the application, an uninhabited cottage on the site will be demolished to make way for the new building. The cottage was completely rebuilt, as it was dilapidated, but it is less than 60 years old and has no heritage value.

There is a non-perennial stream on the property as well as trees. The application says some of the trees, which are neither champion trees nor protected ones, will have to go, but a cypress grove and stands of bamboo will be left to screen the back of the development from the rest of the residential property.

“All the trees that will be removed are oak trees, apart from one cluster of Syzygium; from observation on site, most of the existing oak trees are in poor condition and branches are falling,” the application says.

Constantia Ratepayers’ and Residents’ Association chairperson John McPetrie said the CRRA opposed both densification and further commercialisation of the valley so it was very likely that it would object to the proposal.

Terry Lester, the Christ Church Constantia rector and Constantia Heritage and Education Project (CHEP) committee member, was 5 when his family was forcibly removed from their home in Strawberry Lane, Constantia.

He said the land and the stream behind the cottage set for demolition if development goes ahead held historical significance.

“Just like there are wash houses up on the slopes of Table Mountain where slave women would wash the madam’s clothing in the streams, so too, that path of the stream was the wash house for the slaves of Groot Constantia. Our church had property there too. There is just a plaque commemorating the space. The church started out with a little hall and school there, which taught the children of slaves who worked on Groot Constantia.”

Any development would further obliterate the story of former Constantia residents - a story that still had to be told, he said.

CHEP had since early 2020, without any success, been trying to get the Richard Harris Family Trust to establish a heritage centre and repository for the stories of former residents in another uninhabited, dilapidated cottage 500m before Chardonnay Deli, he said, adding that the project had both the willingness from the Simon van der Stel Foundation to support it and the endorsement of the CRRA.

“Until we are given free and unfettered access to what are the remaining remnants of former residents of Constantia, we cannot give permission to this kind of development because for too long and with such incredible kind of resistance from the late Richard Harris, we have not been able to. We would have to oppose it with every fibre of our being,” Mr Lester said.

TreeKeepers, a voluntary environmental conservation association, said all healthy and mature trees were significant, even if they were deemed of “no consequence” in terms of national legislation.

“Trees are part of our city’s heritage and also provide vital ecological services. Densification and development does not mean destroying trees and green landscapes. Many developments incorporate existing trees successfully.

“Any development of this size and significance in an existing green, leafy suburb should require an inventory of all trees on the site. This should be carried out by an arborist, and trees should be assessed for value to the landscape. Once this has been done, the development should be planned around existing trees that should be retained,” said TreeKeepers chairperson Clare Burgess.

The Richard Harris Family Trust did not respond to repeated requests for comment by time of publication.

Objections and comments, on the prescribed form, can be emailed to comments_objections.southern@capetown.gov.za or write to the City’s Building Development Management district office in Plumstead on the corner of Main and Victoria Roads. Go to capetown.gov.za/LandUseObjections to download the necessary form.