Hip, hip hotels!

Written by Neil Fraser Monday, 03 May 2010 11:01

The Financial Mail (April 23) reported on three new hotels for the inner city – a 120-room four star hotel in Marshall Street, near Rissik Street, opening in May; a 50-room five-star hotel near AAC headquarters and the Standard Bank superblock, which will follow later; and then, next year, a 150-room hotel situated in the same vicinity. These are to be branded as ‘Reef Hotels’ developed by Isaac Chalumbira and hotelier Gustav Krampe. Chalumbira has been active in property development in the inner city for some time. I hear that funding for the first of these hotels, the R70 million Reef Hotels Gold, is from IDC and the ubiquitous TUHF (Trust for Urban Housing Finance). For some years now TUHF have been providing critical financing of urban revitalization projects in the inner city as well as promoting BEE ownership (Citichat 37.2005).

I must admit that I’ve always believed that the last hotel to be developed in the inner city was the Mapungubwe, a conversion of the old French Bank building on the corner of Marshall and Ferreira Streets. I know that it has been recoding excellent occupancy rates Mondays to Fridays reflecting its strong support by business folk but is evidently pretty much empty over weekends. But the FM also refers to another new inner city hotel, the Ashanti. That caught me a bit by surprise because I know that the Ashanti and neighbouring Dogon (Citichat 23/2006), both in Anderson Street, were refurbishments of ex Hollard Insurance commercial buildings by Leungo Holdings (a Hollard/PHAB Joint Venture) into high quality residential accommodation. Whilst they were originally dubbed ‘Condominium Hotels’ the Ashanti has obviously moved on from there and is now a full hotel being managed by Urban Hip Hotels. The Ashanti web page states that it   “offers 29 fully designer furnished apartments, complete with fully fitted kitchens, modern décor, spacious lounges, plasma TV screens & satellite television and en-suite bathrooms. All Studio, 1 Bedroom and 2 Bedroom Apartments are services (sic) daily. The trendy stylish and hip designer apartments at Ashanti Hotel, all offer self-catering facilities and guests therefore have a choice to enjoy a quiet meal in or try out the unique, fantastic & modern on-site restaurant Darkie Café. Darkie Café offers wholesome African fusion cuisine with a wonderful choice of mouth watering dishes that will please the most discerning palate.”
Hmmm! Interesting that these two and the three “Reef Hotels’ all cluster in the south western corner of the inner city, but then that is the Mining and Financial quarter of the inner city so obviously are focusing on the same clientele as the Mapungubwe.

There are of course at least two more hotels in the inner city currently in the construction phase, or more accurately, refurbishment stage – one in the north and the other in the east of the inner city.

The development in the north is ‘The Orange Hotel’ in Braamfontein mentioned in passing in last month’s Citichat (Citichat 3/2010). This is a South Point development – South Point has become a major player in Braamfontein particularly in the field of student accommodation. (My apologies to them - last week I credited the refurbishment of Sable Centre to Growth Point – it should have been South Point!).  This new R45 million investment will broaden South Point’s current portfolio which is predominantly in student accommodation and, undoubtedly, have a marked impact on the Braamfontein precinct. The Orange Hotel is described as a 4-star “hip” hotel, comprising sixty rooms, a floor of meeting/function rooms and ground floor reception, bar and dining area extending onto an outdoor deck. It will be a “hip, cool and sexy” destination for the 30 to 40 age group and will be based on the “crash-pad concept” that aims to create an ‘edited down’ version of the boutique hotel experience. N’est-ce pas? Well, I gather that it targets those who spend their days crammed with meetings and work and want somewhere to ‘crash and chill’ in “the place to be and be seen”. All I want, after a day like that, is to be unnoticed and sleep uninterrupted but then I am twice the age of the target market! Hey, maybe there is a niche for the development in the inner city for us aged who quietly pass out rather than crash! Anyway, The Orange Hotel looks as though it will add further depth to the Braamfontein ‘offering’ which is becoming more and more eclectic!    

The hotel development in the east is part of the highly imaginative and visionary ‘Main Street Life’ complex that is an addition to developer Jonathan Leibmann’s east side developments close to his unique ‘Arts-on-Main’ concept. I spent an interesting hour or so with him some weeks ago as he took me through the Main Street Life project. Milisuthando Bongela, in the Mail and Guardian of 16 April describes the concept as not “just any old apartment block. It aims to have a greater impact on the lives of its inhabitants. It’s a physical representation of the 2010 consumer minded in a post-recession climate where the values of knowledge, collaboration, sharing, innovation and green living will form part of the DNA of this nascent community”.  It has 200 residential units for sale with high quality retail on the ground floor, music rehearsal rooms, laundromat and DVD rental service and weekly art movie showings. Apart from the 200 units for sale, the development includes a 12 suite boutique hotel “The 12 Decades”. Each suite will be representative of one of the twelve decades of Jozi’s history and each the creation of individual designers. Saw some of them and they are like wow! Also saw some of the apartments which are quite stunning. Each floor reflects a different theme ranging from art and architecture to the visual arts and includes film, fashion and design, photography and fine art. So, the objective here is to build a collaborative art community complementing that of Arts on Main. Owners of the units will be able to utilize the development’s exhibition space and, for an annual fee, will have the use of the rooftop which can also be utilized by fee paying non residents. This large area will be used as collaborative space and includes a roof-top pub, yoga facilities, plunge pool and, unusually, a small open air boxing gym. All surrounded by the inner city skyline – great place for some pre-work Tai Chi but then who’d want to go to work!

The current inner city hotel downside is that both the Carlton and the ex part-Tollman Towers, then Johannesburg Sun, then Downtown Holiday Inn, remain as empty, towering, brooding hulks on the cityscape. The first closed in 1997 and the building is now owned by a parastatal which goes some way to explaining the decade-plus lack of progress in its re-use. But the other is in private sector hands, the last I heard was that this is a Tanzanian developer, but, apart from a very short stint as the 700 roomed Kwa Dukuza Egoli Hotel & Conference Centre (Citichat 39/2002) and a lot of talk, it also appears to never get any further. Maybe they’re just too old (and big) to be hip’d over!

At one time these two hotels together provided some 1300 beds in the inner city. Now I calculate that between the Parktonian, Devonshire, Mapungubwe and Ashanti there are 483 beds (excluding the Sunnyside Park and Milpark Holiday Inn which aren’t really in the inner city) with another 392 planned - if one counts the three ‘Reef’ hotels, The Orange and Main Street Life’s “12 Decades”. So we are edging back to the one thousand room mark in a variety of very, very different hotel offerings to two decades ago.

I somehow think that the development of the eastern side of the inner city is beginning to outpace that of the west. (Citichat 23.2007 – East, west, which is best?) Is this perhaps a private sector vs public sector thing? The eastern sector has witnessed the development of ‘Arts on Main’ followed by ‘Main Street Life’ which is adjacent to another large new residential redevelopment all breathing fresh life into a previously run down and decrepit quadrant of the inner city. Add the fact that AFHCO have done some amazing things with deserted buildings in this same eastern precinct (such as the conversion of the old Greatermans office building into 428 residential units in partnership with International Housing Solutions SA Workforce Housing Fund), as well as with a number of run-down, ‘infested’ buildings that surrounded the now refurbished Transport Square and are in the throes of completing their massive 120 End Street project as well as the upgrading of the adjacent park and the provision of the Citykidz pre-and primary school.

The Greatermans Headquarter building built in 1950/1 – “a powerful statement of a large-scale trading organization”  (‘Johannesburg Style’ – Clive M Chipkin) incidentally had been hijacked and totally stripped of just about everything – it now offers secure rental accommodation to R3500.00 to R10000-00 per month earners  in an incredible location vis-à-vis proximity to the centre city and large employment centres such as Carlton Centre, the ABSA campus and the 2010 precinct centering around Coca-Cola Park. It is next to a BRT station and the units offer an open plan kitchen design, great finishes, VoIP telephones, internet and DSTV connections and a safe environment via 24 hour security, fingerprint access, street patrollers and a shuttle service into the CBD. Hey, the new stuff in the inner city, even if it is recycled, is offering much, much more than it used to.

Moving to the western side of the inner city, Newtown, the office block extension to Sci Bono appears to be nearing completion but the redevelopment of Transport House into another boutique hotel, announced by the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) probably two years ago, has yet to begin as is the case with the redevelopment of the ‘Majestic site (opposite the eastern façade of the Market Theatre) evidently now due to start in July after years of JPC bureaucracy. Good news is that the massive Atterbury Property Development’s R1 billion-plus project north of Museum Africa known as ‘Newtown Junction’ also is slated for construction-start in mid year. It will be a mixed use project consisting of a retail mall, 180 room 4-star hotel, offices and apartments and a ‘borough market’. The project will link through Museum Africa to Mary Fitzgerald Square and also provide much needed additional space for the Market Theatre. Newtown therefore may be providing another two hundred-plus hotel rooms which will take the inner city over the 1000 room mark.

….and the unhip?

Some observations from spending three days a week in the inner city over the last three weeks.

2010 is still a major driver of getting things done that should have been done regularly and not just when we host a World Summit or Cup! Street names being painted on kerbs and new bright yellow directional signs being erected like a rash over the city. Two problems with the latter – I notice they are all being displayed on their own new shiny poles – why wasn’t the opportunity taken to rationalise our pavement clutter by consolidating signs on fewer poles. Bureaucracy undoubtedly but probably also because we have unco-ordinated council departments, each feels that it has the right to display its own signs on its own poles! Thus one has poles displaying traffic signs, hawker signs, tourist signs, etc etc and quite often poles displaying no signs at all! Thus new poles are even being erected where other poles stand forlornly, their signage having disappeared some years ago. Anyway, who checks that the signs are correct in the first place? The half dozen or more signs erected last week in Miriam Makeba Street pointing one to Mary Fitzgerald Square are all marked “Mary Fitz Gerald Square”! I kid you not, go to my blog www.citichat.co to see the evidence. On the blog you can also see that the new refuse bins (Citichat 2.2010) have not weathered the council employees’ vast ability and skill required to overturn them. So, now we have three generations of damaged refuse bins adding to our urban environment and experience!

Last week I drove from ORT to the city westwards past Eastgate Shopping Centre through Kensington and then down Commissioner Street. I must admit that I may have missed it, but I cannot remember seeing any warning signage suggesting that you had better sort out which outer lane to travel in before the two central lanes merge to form a dedicated BRT lane over which you cannot drive or which you supposedly can’t cross. (At least when De Waal Drive was doubled in the 1950s/60s the resultant confusion next to Groote Schuur Hospital was directed by a “Solly Morris’ sign - he was then City Engineer of Cape Town – that simply stated “Merge” and drew fascinating comments from international visitors. I digress, sorry - as I progressed down the lane I was trapped into by having no earlier choice (the wrong one of course) I was overtaken by a number of combi-taxis and cars traveling in the BRT lane. One of these admittedly was a CA car which I thought could be excused as their road markings for the bus/taxi lane from the airport to the city are clearly marked. Then there was a car and a bakkie parked in the BRT lane with no drivers in sight at all. At every intersection, one out of probably ten vehicles turned across the traffic because they had been in the wrong lane causing heightened blood pressure and related bad language and gestures from the impeded drivers. I never saw any Metro Police, not one. I remember being told that security would be high and JMPD would be would ensure that none of these things would happen!

I also didn’t see any presence of the JMPD in “five o-clock” traffic when it mostly grinds to a halt because of mainly, but not solely, combi-taxi drivers blocking intersections because they have jumped the traffic lights. On a couple of occasions my car was almost hit by vehicles going straight through red lights. Then, as I said last month (Citichat 3.2010) potholes are becoming a major hazard. I read somewhere this week that the overspend on stadia has been so great that we can expect very little in the way of ‘new spend’ or maintenance for a number of years, so cultivate that pot-hole, learn to love it, it may be with you for some time to come!

Ah well, there’s still 40 days to go before kick-off, anything could still happen!

Finally, Cheers, neil