Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa March 2013 | Page 46
SMART MOVES
ABOVE: 1970 - JHB CBD,
living in the northern suburbs and working
there most attractive for many commuters. It
saved time, there was less crime and above all
the working environment was more pleasant.
First to take up the offer were some of the
leading advertising agencies and accounting
firms, followed by retailers, restaurants, banks
and others. This applied equally to suburbs such
as Bedfordview and Randburg, which saw an
increase in commercial office space being made
available.
As the Sandton City hub grew in the 1970s,
developers bought up many of the gracious
old mansions along West, North, Fifth and
Rivonia Roads. These properties were then
developed into commercial buildings and the
Sandton CBD burgeoned out towards Rivonia
and beyond.
Midrand was another hub that gained
popularity for business in the 1980s. It had
access to both Jo’burg and Pretoria via a welldeveloped road network and plenty of accessible
land for future development.
The CBD, by the end of 2011, had almost a
million square metres of space vacant. So why
has the CBD become a relative ghost town in
JHB, while the suburban areas in JHB have
seen the rise of mixed use – developments
44
March 2013 SA Real Estate Investor
and residential properties being converted to
business use? Perhaps the crime statistics for
March 2011 to March 2012 will reveal the
worrying trend of high crime rates. The crime
statistics for March 2011 – March 2012 in
the CBD are nearly double that of Sandton,
commercial crime in the CBD numbered 2546
while in Sandton the number of commercial
crimes totalled 1333. Common robbery is
another statistic, which shows this difference.
In the CBD, robbery sits at 1034, while in
Sandton the figure is a mere 95. The crime in
the CBD, when compared to a mixed-use area,
is shown to be startlingly high. In addition,
the average response time for the police to
respond to a crime is 25 minutes, ADT is 6 –
10 minutes, Chubb is 10 minutes and CSS is
2 minu \?
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