Image: River Club Website
The City of Cape Town has given the green light to privately-held Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust to develop a new R4 billion 150 000m2 mixed-use development in Observatory that will be anchored by US conglomerate Amazon.
Announcing the decision in a statement issued late on Monday, the city confirmed that the online retail giant will be the anchor tenant within the planned River Club development.
Amazon is expected to take up around 70 000m2 of space for its new African headquarters.
The group already has a strong presence in Cape Town, with smaller offices at the nearby Black River Office Park and data centres in the city, which are largely located in properties owned by JSE-listed Redefine.
Amazon’s current occupied space is mainly for its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, based in the Mother City.
While Amazon itself has been keeping mum about its expansion in South Africa beyond the AWS business, the group’s plans to take up almost half of the space at River Club raises questions on whether it will launch an online retail business locally to take on the likes of Naspers-owned Takealot.com.
The city’s approval of River Club – a planned precinct that will include office, retail and residential components – follows stiff opposition to the development from some sectors including certain members of the Observatory community and the Khoi and San people (referred to collectively as the ‘First Nations’).
According to the City of Cape Town, while the development has been approved as a concept, conditions have been attached requiring further stages of approval.
This means the developer must submit detailed plans on a range of development aspects.
The development is envisaged to take place in phases, with construction set to take place over three to five years.
The city says the project is expected to create more than 5 200 jobs in the first phase of construction. Some 19 000 “indirect and induced jobs” are anticipated to be created through the overall development.
For more detailed information about the new development read the full story on www.moneyweb.co.za
