A R100m blue-chip office park is to be developed in Johannesburg’s upmarket Hyde Park suburb, with building starting next month.

The new development, The Offices of Hyde Park, by Johannesburg-based developer Farquharson Projects, will be situated at 37 William Nicol Drive, between 2nd Avenue and the Hyde Park shopping centre.

James Coutts, MD of Farquharson Projects, says the company plans to start demolishing the house on the site next week, with construction of the new office development to follow. “We hope to complete development by February next year,” says Coutts.

There has been a “huge amount of interest” in the new development from prospective tenants and purchasers.

“We have had our advertising board up at the site for the past six months and we’ve had 75 inquiries so far,” says Coutts.

Originally the development was conceived as a sectional title scheme. “We now plan to hold a portion of the property and possibly sell sectional title units.”

The office park will consist of two buildings of about 2250m² and 2750m². Each will have its own basement parking, with five bays per 100m². Coutts says the total area of offices will be just under 5000m², situated on a 12131m² site.

The development will have more than 120m² of frontage on William Nicol Drive.

Farquharson Projects says the development’s architect has incorporated “green building” design features into the park. These include solar water heating and water-efficient sanitary systems.

With electricity load-shedding on the increase because of SA’s power crisis, Farquharson is also developing the new park to be self-sufficient, with its own electricity provided by back-up generators, and water storage tanks.