Mark Bezencon, development manager of Cape Town-based property developer Rabie Property Projects, which played a leading role in both these developments, said both had had a significant and positive impact on their immediate surroundings.
“In very little time Royal Ascot has become an established fully-fledged suburb while The Island Club was the first project to bring residential living to the central Century City site and in so doing is enabling it to fulfill its vision of becoming a vibrant new urban environment combining residential, retail, leisure and office components all in easy walking distances of each other.”
Bezencon said that most importantly the market had endorsed the high quality of these developments. In both instances the homes had sold out in record time with initial investors having enjoyed significant capital growth, in some cases in excess of 40% over the development phase alone.
Rabie Property Projects was both project manager and co-developer with Harries Projects and Nedbank Corporate Property Finance for The Island Club and was the development manager for Royal Ascot, a Tresso/Investec Property Group project.
Recently completed, The R450m Island Club is a spectacular 445-unit apartment complex set around man-made waterways and islands across the Grand Canal from Canal Walk shopping centre.
He said the challenges of the Island Club included responding to the striking architecture of Canal Walk and in particular its northern face to Half Moon Bay; ensuring that virtually all apartments had water frontage; creating a secure and luxuriously landscaped environment with running tracks, play parks, indoor heated and outdoor pools; producing buildings with movement and changing roofscapes so as to respond to the waterways and achieve visual interest and a human scale and enabling a lifestyle of convenience where buildings and spaces were interconnected and user-friendly.
The professional team on The Island Club also included architects Marc Harries Architects in association with Raymond Alexander; De Villiers Sheard (Civil & Structural Engineers); DSV Consulting (Electrical Engineers); Forsyth Vermeulen & Partners (Quantity Surveyors): David Hellig & Abrahamse (Land Surveyors); Planning Partners (Town Planners & Landscape Architects); Deneys Reitz (Conveyancers); Harries Projects (Construction Managers); Murray & Roberts (Construction) and Nedbank (Development Finance).
Bezencon said the residential component of the mixed-use Royal Ascot project comprised 20 individual group and sectional title schemes providing a total of 1749 units, with all but the last two projects having now been completed.
The challenge of this development, he said, was to implement the revised Development Framework for the 83ha site including the retention a 17,5 ha area as a fynbos reserve and ensuring a consistent interface between private and public land and a holistic, harmonious development within which the individual residential schemes co-exist. In this regard great attention was paid to the walling and streetscapes with intensive landscaping being done throughout the development to create a common thread that binds the development together and gives the ambiance of an already mature suburb.
Other professionals involved with Royal Ascot include Asch Consulting (civil engineers); Rawlins Wales & Partners (electrical engineers); Terry McSweeney (land surveyor); De Leeuw Group (Quantity Surveyor); HHO (Traffic Engineer); Planning Partners (Landscape Architects) and MLH Architects & Planners (Town Planning).
Rabie Property Projects has won previous awards for its developments including a 2004 SAPOA award for its Westlake Estate which went on to win an international award from FIABCI, the International Real Estate Federation.
This year’s winning finalists will be announced at the annual SAPOA Convention which will be held in Durban in May.
