Construction of the apartments will begin in August this year with the construction of the retail, office and the four-star hotel following in 2008. The 12 hectare R500 million development is expected to be complete by 2010.

Strategic development manager Grant Wheatley says that the one of the most important service providers to the project is construction and hence it was chosen, using several risk-mitigating criteria which included that the service provider be a JSE-listed contractor with a good track record who would be able to secure the necessary buying power for a project of this magnitude as well as contribute valuable project management skills.

“We believe Group Five appointment significantly reduces the risk of this project to us, the developers, as well as to our investors in the project,” explains Wheatley.

Managing director for Group Five Housing, Frank Enslin, says his team “is delighted to be working with Novate Property Investments on this ambitious project, which is similar to others Group Five has successfully completed, amongst these, St Michaels on the KwaZulu Natal south coast.” 

Enslin adds that contracts director for St Michaels, Eric Higgitt, will lead the construction team at Triple Point.

“Eric lived in East London for almost 10 years and attended Selborne College before leaving for Johannesburg, where he joined Group Five as a bursary student. He has approximately 20 years’ experience in the field of upmarket residential construction.”   

The contracts with Triple Point and another residential project, The Beacon, bring Group Five back to East London after almost a decade.

“Up to the late 1990s Group Five, based in Port Elizabeth, was involved with contracts that included the Fancourt Golf Estate in George and the luxury four-star Regent Hotel in East London,” Enslin says. More recently, the Keurbooms Hotel and apartments at Plettenberg Bay and the magistrate’s court in Knysna were completed by Enslin’s team.

Although the Triple Point and Beacon Bay contracts will be run with key personnel from Johannesburg, the bulk of the workforce, sub-contractors and suppliers will be locally sourced, a commitment which was essential for the awarding of the contract by Novate.

Wheatley is also delighted that Group Five will run its training programme in the city and offer accredited training opportunities to unskilled and unemployed people in the city. In the past, this programme has benefited females who make up a relatively large percentage of those trained

Other Group Five projects in the region include the SANRAL/Group Five collaboration which has been responsible for the rehabilitation and surfacing of roads linking small rural settlements to Mthatha, Queenstown and the coastal areas. This has brought new economic growth to towns such as Cala, Elliot, Ncgobo, Idutwya and Lady Frere, previously cut off from the main centres by the poor state of the roads.

“Several of these contracts have been in joint venture with our BEE partners, Ilima Projects, who are currently working with Group Five in securing the safety of the Barberskrans pass, south of Cradock, and notorious for dangerous rockfalls,” ends Enslin.

Novate Property Investments, which has been involved in several commercial and residential developments throughout the province, announced earlier this year, that it is to build the R20 million Kwantu Shopping Centre in Alice.