FOUR years ago, Berea residents Cheryl Johnson and Kevin Dunkley formed Save Our Berea, a civic action group aimed at addressing a number of problems across the Berea and beyond.
These problems included illegal or inappropriate developments that usually involved dubious re-zonings as well as neglected properties that become havens for squatters and criminals, and which impacted on the values of adjacent properties.
The organisation also took the city to task for its apparent ignoring of Section 7 of the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act, 1977 (Act No. 103 of 1977) when approving plans.
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This section of the act instructs a municipality to refuse to pass plans if the building to be erected will be built in such a manner or such nature or appearance that the area in which it is to be erected will probably or in fact be disfigured thereby and will probably or in fact derogate from the value of adjoining or neighbouring properties.
The much publicised development at 317 Currie Road is only one of many new developments that have caused concern to ratepayers and taken up by the SOB.
“The litigants in this case against developers, Serengeti Rise have seen their case come to a grinding halt in the Constitutional Court. It was unfortunate that the developer’s attorney, of Norton Rose Fulbright, proclaimed victory. We believe in the Constitution and we respect the decision of the courts but to see this case as a victory is a view totally at odds with the thousands of ratepayers and Save Our Berea supporters who have followed this story,” they said.
The duo said, for the sake of argument, it could be agreed that the developers did everything by the letter of the law and any mistakes made were the fault of the municipality (the municipality have conceded this point). They are adamant that the City should never have agreed to the re-zoning in the first place.
“We have asked a number of pertinent questions in this regard, none of which have been answered,” they said.
Their questions were:
1. Why did the city allow a rezoning that is totally inappropriate for the Berea or any other suburb and has never been used before in that way? They claimed it had been used before then had to retract their statement.
2. Why did the City approve a rezoning that enriched one developer while affecting the values of neighbouring properties negatively? Residential property gets its value from what can be built on the property. When the developer bought the property it was zoned General Residential 1 which allowed a bulk of 1957m2 and then it was rezoned to allow the developer to build 9784m2. In simple language that re-zoning made the value increase five times before a brick was even laid. It added some R20 million to the land price. The increase in profit on the finished development is even greater. Surely as citizens we have a right to ask that question and get a reasonable answer?
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3. Why do we have a town-planning scheme if the city allows a spot re-zoning that is so different from the existing zoning? There are two possible answers, neither of which can be considered as reasonable. The first revolves around a policy of densification but it seems that the politicians have not read their own policy in this regard. The second answer could be that the existing town planning is sixteen years old and things change. The only problem with this second answer is that the City commissioned a town-planning expert, Nathan Iyer, ably assisted by the doyen of town planning in this province, Prof Michael Kahn to do a new plan for the entire Berea among other areas. That plan was finalised and has already been to council and as far as we know raised no objections. In that plan the issue of densification was addressed and the solution was to increase the majority of General Residential zonings from a bulk of 1 to 2. That would densify the Berea equally across the entire spectrum.
“We have great faith in the experts that were employed by the City at great cost and any reasonable person would accept that their job has been well done. But then again, we have to pose the question, why the politicians and officials in our municipality would allow a rezoning against their own existing town planning scheme and more interestingly why they would allow a rezoning against the new scheme, that the ratepayers paid for and was done by experts? There is no rational explanation forthcoming,” they said.
4. Why would the city allow a zoning where the essential basics like side spaces, building lines which are incorporated in the scheme for important reasons like fire prevention and natural light, amongst other reasons, be removed completely?
“We are currently inundated with complaints regarding a number of developments across the Berea that are in the construction phase, where the plans have either not been passed, or building is at variance with the plans. Residents who live adjacent to these developments are refused sight of the approved plans and even the most basic information is being withheld by officials who tell ratepayers to use the Protection of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to get the information they require. This is nothing but a stalling tactic by politicians and officials who abuse our Constitution which protects the right of citizens to access information,” they said.
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