Vision of Wynberg 2030 discussed

The South Peninsula Chapter of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with the City of Cape Town held a business meeting to showcase the investment and efforts going into reshaping of Wynberg by 2030.

Business owners gathered at the Alphen Centre in Constantia on Thursday March 14 to hear talks and presentations from Wynberg councillor, Emile Langenhoven, the Wynberg Improvement District (WID), mayoral committee member for safety and security, JP Smith, as well as property developers that painted a picture of the current challenges taking place in the suburb and the potential of what can be achieved in the next five to six years.

Mr Langenhoven said the problem areas that persist in Wynberg have been confined to a “controllable area,” including the Wynberg public transport interchange (PTI) and a few problem buildings. However, it was on an upward trajectory, that Wynberg now “is a lot cleaner, feels safer and more open” than it was two years ago.

“Sub-council 20 meets on a monthly basis with the problem buildings unit and with help of the WID we put together a list of about 31 problem buildings in Wynberg, we have now managed over the past few months to whittle that down to about three or four. Ebor Road still remains a core concern.”

Mr Langenhoven said the sub-council has been negotiating with the trustees since Uli Heydt, the owner of three buildings, 8, 10 Ebor Road and 263 Main Road, passed away late November.

The trustees, he says, have committed to go through an eviction process with the High Court. Once an eviction notice has been processed the trustees with the problem buildings unit and the road department, will be on stand-by for the day of eviction.

“Once the eviction takes place, the property owners will bring their construction company to brick the building up, the roads department will brick the lane up to prevent access and secure the area,” he said.

Eviction is set to take place sometime this year, Mr Langenhoven said.

“These problem buildings are a central nexus of crime in the area, every criminal that runs away from Law Enforcement or SAPS runs to Ebor Road. Once we solve that problem I think you’re going to see a huge difference within Wynberg itself.”

He added that public private partnership with community participation would “see Wynberg come from a slump it has been going through for a decade”.

Mr Smith gave a snapshot to show what the safety and security directorate has been doing in over a 100 days.

Between mid-December to mid-March, a total of 4 609 service requests were attended to in Wynberg. Of the notable service requests from Ward 62, the largest proportion came out of patrols and operations at 726, contraventions where fines were written up 748, crime 637, drugs 593 and street people 589.

Mr Smith said crime was unusually high for an area like Wynberg but 30 new law enforcement officers would be added next month.

He also added that the single largest detection on CCTV is drugs and many of the residents’ complaints related to the use of drugs in public spaces. This was echoed by Gene Lohrentz of Geocentric Urban Management, the company tasked with the delivery of the City Improvement District, including WID, a problem he described as somewhat pervasive in Wynberg.

“If We must just realise one thing about drug dealing: if you arrest a drug dealer today there will be somebody else in his place tomorrow. That is the reality of the business.

“The type of fight we fight with police and law enforcement, the extra hands that we get will be able to make a huge difference in our reactions to be able to alert authorities to those and actually catch them red-handed,” Mr Lohrentz said

Property developer, Mark Keal of Keal Properties, said the group planned to recreate the success it had in acquiring the Wynberg Centre mid-2023.

According to Mr Keal, the centre was in disrepair, overridden with drug dealers, users and criminality. However, with their architects, a plan was formulated to turn the centre around. The development created over 250 new jobs and the centre reopened last December.

“Following the success of Wynberg Centre we have 199. It was a hijacked building two blocks down from Wynberg Centre, it was hijacked for three to four years. The eviction order was in December and it is a vacant possession at the moment. We took it over two weeks ago,” Mr Keal said.

“Since taking it over we started very minor works that you won’t see just walking past but there were drug peddlers on the outside of the building. Every day you could just see walking past drugs, criminal activity, drinking, urinating, those guys since we have taken over have disappeared. They have moved further down the road. I think that is an example of regeneration: you slowly clean out the bad element.”

The upgrades planned for 199 include upgrading the facade, and re-tenanting the property, creating 82 student housing rooms and adding a fuel station.

Eugene Pienaar from Tunipix Pty Ltd, another developer who had bought properties in Lester Road adjacent to the railway, said the group intended to create a studio apartment, gated estate for salaried workers, such as nurses and security guards who spend substantial amounts of their salary to travel from the outskirts of Cape Town to get to work in Wynberg, the city centre and surrounds.

“Ultimately what we want to develop is a fairly uplevel market development consisting out of three phases, a security development with fairly small rooms. There is an international trend especially in areas like Tokyo, New York. These areas where accommodation is super expensive and unaffordable go small, that doesn’t mean you compromise the quality of living, it just means it is small and tight.

“Luxurious, upmarket but efficient in terms of space to make it affordable for the demographic that we are targeting, the nurse, the guard, the cashier, people trying to step up in the world and for these people space is maybe not the key criteria that they are looking for, they are looking for safety and to be close to work,” Mr Pienaar said.

Andrew Charman, a Wynberg property and business owner, was sceptical as someone he says who has been in Wynberg for over 20 years and closely observed developments.

“A big concern relates to land banking. There are great development opportunities and people are aware that one day Wynberg will have good opportunities for student housing and extra but in between now and that future, properties are bought and then they are used as slums, or they are rented out.

“And what’s happened systematically over the past 20 years from what I have observed is that once you get into the slum market, the slum market often takes control of your building. So that is a major challenge.

“It is absolutely critical that the City thinks very carefully about the kind of developments it wants to make sure that those buildings are well serviced as we know the trajectory very carefully.”

.