After several years of decline, in which many companies relocated their headquarters to Sandton, Johannesburg’s central business district (CBD) has benefited from targeted investments by the Johannesburg
Development Agency (JDA) and the creation of the Johannesburg Urban Development Zone (UDZ).

At 18 square kilometres, the Johannesburg UDZ is one of the biggest projects of its kind. More than 100 projects with a total value of about R1-billion have been signed off, with another 150 worth R2.5-billion to follow.

Huge tax incentives linked to property development have successfully lured many businesses back into the city. Newly constructed buildings attract tax deductions of up to 20% investment in the first year, with a further 5% in each of the subsequent 16 years. Buildings that are refurbished attract five-year depreciations (‘straight-line’) or 20% of the investment annually for the five years after completion.

Art in the city
The JDA has spent about R400-million on six strategic areas in the CBD since 2001. By spending on the seemingly insignificant elements of the urban landscape like pavements, cleanliness and public art, the
agency has helped to clean up the image of the CBD. This, in turn, has been a catalyst for the private sector to spend over R7-billion in recent years. Now that pedestrians in Braamfontein share their space with a greatbig buck (The Eland by Clive van den Berg) and its pavements have nine intriguing metal trees (created by sculptors of the Trinity Session), it’s easier for people shopping and working there to like the place.

William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx have collaborated to produce The Firewalker, a four-metre-high sculpture depicting a woman carrying a brazier on her head. Sited at the end of Queen Elizabeth Bridge in Newtown, it is a wonderfully fluid and dynamic piece that pays tribute to the hundreds of women who sell the food that fuels Johannesburg citizens on a daily basis.

In 2003, half of Newtown’s office space was vacant and rental of R25 per square metre was the best price a landlord could get. In 2009, there is a lot more office space available, but the vacancy rate is down to 16% and rental rates are above R50.

The key elements that the JDA worked on in Braamfontein were street lights and trees, in keeping with the agency’s commitment to try find the appropriate intervention for each area rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.

Renovation and innovation
One of the biggest companies involved in innercity housing is the Affordable Housing Company (AHC), which intends spending about R1-billion on upgrading 5 000 flats in the period to 2011. AHC currently has 3 500 flats on its books in Johannesburg. Aengus Property Holdings has 1 500 units, and all of them are let. In 2009, the company spent R323-million on buying the Johannesburg CBD portfolio of property-loan stock company ApexHi.

To help stimulate the regeneration process, the JDA held its second Halala Joburg Awards ceremony in 2009. Awards were handed out in categories such as Caring Joburg, Relaxing and Playing Joburg, and Affordable Living, honouring companies and agencies contributing to the process of uplifting the city.

The Colosseum Heritage Award was presented to Tiber Group and Renalia for the restoration and development of Turbine Hall Square, which now houses the headquarters of AngloGold Ashanti. Other companies to win awards were the Affordable Housing Company, Leungo Investments, Olitzki Property Holdings, Makhulong a Matala (a Johannesburg Housing Company subsidiary), Smart Gym and City Kidz.

The new and the old
A major new development is taking place near the magistrate’s court. Zurich South Africa, a short-term insurance company, is building the first new office block to go up in the CBD for decades. Absa Bank is spending more than a billion rand on a major upgrade to its site in Marshalltown.

Marshalltown is in the south-west of the city, close to where the pioneer gold miners who built Johannesburg erected their first shelters. Standard Bank was the first bank to have a branch in Johannesburg, in a tent, in
1886. Since then it has built several landmark buildings: Standard Bank Chambers in 1908 and the dynamic skyscraper, Standard Bank Centre, which helped to define the last major boom period of the 1970s. The bank’s headquarters now sprawls across several city blocks in Marshalltown, showing the company’s confidence in the new city. The Standard Bank Gallery is housed in the old Commercial Exchange Building.

Through all the ups and downs, one of South Africa’s best-known companies, Anglo American, stayed on in Johannesburg’s best-known commercial building, 44 Main Street, completed in 1939. There’s a monumentality about the design, something reassuring, as though the building knew that it would be there to celebrate the revival of central Johannesburg.

Until recently, retailers have been reticent to join the move back to the CBD, but that is changing. In March 2009, Engineering News reported that Atterbury Properties will spend R900-million on a massive retail project in Newtown that will see the historic potato sheds sensitively restored. A hotel will be built and some 40 000 square metres of retail space will be added to the city’s stock.

Perhaps it will not be long before the centre of Johannesburg again looks like the scene described by a historian a hundred years ago: ‘On Saturday nights, when the East and West Rand populace came in their thousands to the centre of the town, Pritchard Street was so full of men, women and children that one could only walk with difficulty.’