This is the sentiment of the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA)’s Douglas Cohen.
The JDA on Friday took the National Treasury officials on a tour, to some of its flagship capital projects in Soweto.
The tour focused primarily on the projects that are funded by the Treasury through grants allocations to the City.
“Jabulani precinct is arguably the fastest emerging business district of Soweto. It’s got all the necessary ingredients of the central business district, which includes the hospital, the Jabulani mall, police station, the state of the art Soweto Theatre, transport facilities among others,” said Cohen.
The tour was also part of the Treasury’s initiative to ensure transparency and maximum participation of its budget reforms by ordinary South Africans.
Civil society organisations joined the tour to see the implementation of projects on the ground, which are funded from the national fiscus.
The Treasury has been working in partnership with Imali Yethu – a coalition of civil society organisations – to develop an easy accessible online budget data portal. The ultimate vision of developers and architects is to establish Jabulani as the true central business district and a model precinct for others to follow. The precinct has the advantage to tap into its rich history, arts and cultural vibrancy.
The iconic and colourful Soweto Theatre has remarkably set Jabulani apart with its imposing presence, having injected new energy into the social, cultural and artistic life of Soweto. The 19 000 square metre Jabulani Mall, which houses national retails, makes it the hustle and bustle of the area.
High-rise residential property developments are going up quickly, with private developers competing for space. This includes the new trendy Jabulani flats developed by private developers and the low rental stock developed by government.
Bolstered by the growing demand and development in the precinct, private developers are investing into the second mall in the area, the Jabulani Crossing Mall and office space as more and more financial institutions are moving to where their clients are.
Lwazi Sikiti, JDA’s Project Manager, said the City was taking advantage of the billions worth of infrastructure investment by private sector in the precinct, by complimenting it with the social infrastructure investment.
“Having engaged with communities and various stakeholders, we decided to build the sports facility in the area to deal with issues of rampant crime and abuse of alcohol,” said Sikiti.
Sikiti said JDA in collaboration with the South African Football Association (Safa), were building an impressive sports facility that would include the soccer field, change rooms, Safa building, multipurpose hall, swimming pool, basketball courts, library, computer room, offices amongst others.
“The vision is to have teams in the area playing in some of sort of an amateur league, including having the soccer games playing at night over the weekends. We have realised that crime and alcohol abuse happen mostly at night over the weekends,” added Sikiti.
Overlooking the construction site of the new sports facility are new flats developed by Calgro. Directly opposite the Nike Football Training Centre in Klipspruit, JDA is building another ambitious sport facility. The facility comprise of the indoor soccer, which would be complete with change rooms and can also be used as an indoor basketball court.
