“Power outages are threatening to slow down, if not entirely stop, the rate of property development in the city and country,” warns SAPOA CEO Neil Gopal, pointing to outages that occur more and more frequently.

“The industry needs to know – and urgently – how the City of Johannesburg is planning to deal with the situation. What will happen to future development if City Power cannot provide additional electricity?”

Gopal is having an urgent meeting with the City of Johannesburg’s Development Planning and Urban Management executive director Philip Harrison, and the two will be holding an informal discussion this week to try and clarify the situation.

Harrison acknowledges that the power outages are a difficult matter, but adds that the City’s Growth Management Strategy (GMS), due to be finalized in February, will provide a clear and city-wide picture of development patterns and associated infrastructure capacity constraints.

“The GMS will directly inform the City’s capital budgeting for the next financial year and will also inform decision-making around town planning applications,” explains Harrison.

“We want to avoid a knee-jerk reaction and out forward a considered opinion.”

He adds that the GMS will be communicated to, and discussed with, external stakeholders – with SAPOA being a priority.

Gopal adds that he initiated discussions with Eskom in late 2005 on the potential future shortage of electricity.   Says Gopal, “At that stage my view to Eskom, two years ago, was that the SAPOA members own shopping centres and office parks.  And in this respect, we should investigate more efficient use of energy (e.g. light bulbs) throughout these buildings. Sadly this was not considered at the time, but there is still value in this suggestion going forward.