CENTURY CITY is rapidly emerging as a premier office node in the Western Cape with close to 110 000 sq m of office bulk having been sold in the past three years.
Eight buildings with a total of 40 325 sq m of office space have been completed to date as well as 9 200 sq m of offices in the office towers above the Canal Walk shopping centre. A further 23 634 sq m of offices - the new regional offices for Vodacom and PricewaterhouseCoopers - will come on stream in mid-2001.
Justin De Wet Steyn of Monex Development Company, which is developing the 250 ha Century City site, said construction of a 6 000 sq m building for a private consortium was underway and work on at least three additional office developments would start shortly.
The average take-up in Cape Town is just over 40 000 sq m of A-grade office space per annum. Century City has been securing a large percentage of this averaging more than 33 000 square metres of office bulk sales a year with realisable land prices having escalated from R930 per square bulk metre three years ago to R1 500 per square bulk metre which has been consistently achieved for prime N1 fronting or canal fronting sites over the past 18 months. Land not fronting on to the N1 or the canals can however be acquired at a much lower rate of around R1 000 per bulk square metre.
Projects due to start shortly include new offices for the Louis Group and Century Square, a R80m prestigious, high-tech sectional title office development fronting onto the canal and overlooking Intaka Island, Century City's award winning wetlands conservation area.
Century Square, which is being developed by Harries Projects, will comprise 10 500 sq m of prime office space with units ranging in size from 50 sq m to 1 000 sq m or larger. The development is aimed at small to medium size corporate and professional owner-occupiers and investors. Designed along the tried and tested concept of the successful Roeland Square in Cape Town and the more recent Westlake Square, Century Square will be built around a paved communal landscaped square with a coffee shop.
"This will be the third generation of this community campus-style formula offering exclusivity in a compact scheme which we have been able to improve on every time. Century Square will offer a high quality environment for tenants and a excellent, secure investment with significant upside for investors," says Roger Harries, a director of Harries Project.
Multiple gabled entrances to Century Square will provide a limited number of superb and unique opportunities for naming rights and strong corporate branding opportunities for tenants.
Harries said Century City was centrally located at the epicenter of the Cape Town metropole, midway between the central business districts of Cape Town and Bellville, and enjoyed easy accessibility from the N1. "The building will be designed to integrate with the environment and to maximise its positioning on the water's edge with most of the units having water frontage. Tenants will be able to catch a water taxi to Canal Walk shopping centre and we will also make a number of moorings available to tenants who wish to keep their own boats."
Construction is due to start in May this year with completion scheduled for April 2002.
Harries said the project offered buyers a superior investment opportunity with units selling from R5 650 per sq m.
"If one were to buy a unit for R350 000 and let it at a gross rental of R69 a sq m, you could see net return of 13% in year one," he said.
De Wet Steyn said demand for office space had picked up sharply in recent months since the opening of the Canal Walk shopping and entertainment centre which has attracted well over 7 million visitors since opening in October last year
Publisher: Cape Business News
Source: Cape Business News