Property developers in Knysna and Plettenberg Bay are fighting back against what they see as a flood of negative publicity about property development on the Garden Route.

They have formed a new body - to be known as the Forum for Sustainable Development - to put their side of the case on the issue of property development along the environmentally sensitive South Cape coast.

Prominent Knysna-based Garden Route property developer Dr Chris Mulder will be the chairman of both the Knysna and Plettenberg Bay branches of the forum.

One of the new body's committee members, Peter Behr - managing director of the Kurland Hotel at The Crags - said that the main purpose of the forum was to "counter the flood of negative publicity" about property development, and to "highlight the positive aspects".

The new developers? association comes against the background of the publication of the final draft of the Western Cape provincial spatial development framework (SDF), which sets stringent new limits on property development.

The Western Cape SDF identifies vast tracts of land on the Garden Route as environmentally sensitive "core areas" in which no housing developments will be permitted.

The SDF places strict limitations on municipal planners and will have huge implications for property development along the Garden Route.

According to the Plettenberg Bay Community Environment Forum, many of the larger residential developments and lifestyle estates proposed for the Garden Route now stand no chance of approval.

Behr said the new body would be making representations to the provincial authorities on the final draft of the SDF before the May 13 deadline.

It is expected that the final document will be signed at a provincial environment summit in June.

Behr said: "Property development is not bad, and there are certainly ways it can be done responsibly."

He said property developers had come under pressure from a number of sources, and often seemed to be a "lone voice out there".

This was the main reason for the need for a body like the new forum.

In The Crags, the main speaker at the first meeting of the new body on Tuesday afternoon was Mulder.

The Bitou branch of the forum will have a committee of four members: Mulder, Behr, Andrew Endean (one of the developers of the proposed new 700-unit Hanglip golf estate east of Plett), and William Edwards, a landowner in The Crags.

Mulder declined to comment on the SDF and the new developers? forum.

Eastern Province Herald