[imagesource:wikicommons]

Mouille Point residents are miffed about an apparent Bay Road eye-sore that’s been standing derelict for nearly a decade.

According to locals, the building, ironically dubbed Cinderella, has become an attraction for vagrants and even had a brothel running from it at some stage before it was bought by an Irish investor.

The eye-sore of ill repute is now owned by well-known property investor Kenneth Denton, who owns prime real estate all along the Atlantic Seaboard. Denton bought the property for more than R3 million in 2011 with the idea to turn it into a family home.

Denton assigned an architect to build his dream home with a “world-class” structure, three storeys in height, but getting approval for the build seems to have run into several delays, leading to a standoff between local residents and the developer.

According to the Cape Argus, Denton is quoted as saying that it has taken almost a decade to get planning consent, while at the same time the very people who are complaining about the eye-sore “are the very people raising 68 objections and delaying it, so they cannot expect it to be done and then go to planning tribunals and delay the whole process.”

Local architect, Greg Viljoen, also refused to comment on the plans for the building after a previous publication misquoted him as saying the build was “imminent”, but according to IOL, his website notes a “unique design which had an extreme challenge and had a ‘open-minded client’ who allowed him to create a beautiful, simple, world-class structure which would be transformed into an architectural masterpiece 4-bedroom home”.

Sounds like exactly the kind of posh pozzie the neighbours would want, but despite the plans having been submitted in 2012, it’s been one delay after the other. Mouille Point Ratepayers’ Association spokesperson, Jane Meyer, says the property has been standing empty for 14 years, and questioned why “the building plans for this site were approved in March 2019, yet no construction has started yet?”

Fair question. Sea Point Central Improvement District said they were not at liberty to comment, and the Western Cape Department of Infrastructure spokesperson Jandré Bakker said they “did not have jurisdiction over the site and the applicable planning/approval authority would be the City of Cape Town.”

All this seems to suggest that the process is being held up somewhere in approval limbo by the City of Cape Town as both sides want the building built. Jane from the Ratepayers Association wants it gone, and Denton wants his home built.

Somewhere, someone needs to sign something before Mouille Point gets another pop-up brothel.

[source:iol]