'Green Point stadium benefitting area'

Now that the new Green Point stadium is all-but complete – and lit up with a magical soft glow at night – almost all the criticism and the dread that it would downgrade the precinct have melted away.

So says Lanice Steward, MD of Anne Porter Knight Frank (APKF), who adds that it is "impossible not to be impressed". "When the lights come on after dark, one has the impression that a benign spaceship has landed here. It is just far enough away not to impinge on the attractive cosmopolitan café district on Somerset Road (which has proliferated over the last year), but close enough to give a feeling that something very exciting, very modern and almost beyond our understanding has happened here."

Steward added the City Council's upgrading of the surrounding landscapes has almost been as impressive as the building itself.

"Most of the major roads have been reconfigured and retarred in places and given very attractive pavements with trees at regular intervals. The area is now genuinely becoming green at last. Previously the golf course was a flat and, let's face it, not particularly interesting open area. Now it undulates attractively and is interlaced with water channels and small lakes. This, of course, makes it far more interesting and challenging to play as well as a great deal more attractive to look at, especially at night when the surrounding buildings are reflected in the water courses."

Steward says that very few people in Green Point right now are prepared to sell their property, although the situation could change after the 2010 World Cup.

"Right now, people are sitting on their properties and, in our estimation, prices have already risen by some 20% since the end of 2008. Like De Waterkant and Clifton, Green Point has suddenly found itself popular and sought after by those looking for the 'right' place to live.

Lanice Steward says "there is a certain appropriateness in the revived status that Green Point is achieving".

"In the 18th and 19th Centuries, many Capetonians living in the city had summer homes here to which they retreated when the heat, the South Easter winds and the water pollution of the city became uncomfortable. The precinct had SA's first trams, initially horse-drawn and later electric powered.

"The first sea water pool, a wooden structure, was also a focus of social activity and an annual fair (on the area where the stadium now stands) was always popular."

For more information contact Lanice Steward on 021 671 9120 or send an email.

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