Beachfront bust-up over luxury hotel plan

Camps Bay dispute now front line in wider spat over city planning

● A battle looms over one of Cape Town’s famed tourist beachfronts where a proposed 101-room hotel has prompted legal action from local ratepayers.

Dust and harsh words are already swirling around the demolition site on the beachfront, which is shaping up to be the front line in a broader spat over Cape Town development planning.

Critics of the planned five-star hotel addition to the Camps Bay skyline say it is just too much concrete for a celebrated tourist strip. Supporters say it will create jobs and draw international tourists. It will include a new 278m2 restaurant.

“Nothing about it is good — people are shocked,” ratepayers’ committee member Chris Von Ulmenstein told the Sunday Times.

The legal dispute hinges largely on the height of the hotel façade, which the Camps Bay and Clifton Ratepayers Association (CBCRA) says is 5m higher than the 10m restriction for the picturesque suburb.

The CBCRA is furious that the City of Cape Town has approved the building departures despite numerous objections. But the architect insists the five-storey building’s height is legal because it is set back from the front façade. He says the hotel is a major improvement on the previous building, which has already been demolished.

“Everything is gone except for a lot of rubble,” said Von Ulmenstein, adding that the summer wind had blasted the dust onto the beach. “We had a bad southeaster about two days ago and it blew all that cement dust over to people enjoying the beach.”

Rubble is being cleared off the building site, which adjoins a well-known restaurant and is directly opposite Camps Bay beach and its signature tall palm trees. Workmen and earth-moving machinery were on site when the Sunday Times visited this week.

Contention over the proposed hotel dates back to before the pandemic when plans were first circulated for public comment. It continued during the approval phase — including an unsuccessful CBCRA appeal against the city’s initial thumbs-up — and culminated in an ongoing war of words between the CBCRA and architect Greg Scott.

Scott accuses the CBCRA of waging a misinformation campaign against the development and circulating a “fraudulent” artist’s impression on social media — a claim the CBCRA denies.

Scott told the Sunday Times the initial development application was submitted in July-August 2017 and final building plan approval was only received in October 2022.

“There are any number of opinions on the development and we are all entitled to our respective views, whether based on fact, hearsay or other basis of understanding. The simple facts are that we have followed due process at every step of the way; the approvals were gained over five years of process that included public comment and two rounds of engagement with the CBCRA.

“The project is set to benefit a huge amount of people, support hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs, contribute to South Africa and Cape Town’s GDP and tourism sector and materially improve the built fabric of Camps Bay and the beachfront. It would be a great pity if the narrow interests of a minority derail this,” he said.

Cape Town’s deputy mayor, Eddie Andrews, who is head of spatial planning, this week confirmed the three-storey height restriction in terms of the municipal planning bylaws. In approving the development in 2020, the city’s municipal planning tribunal said: “The [zoning] departure to permit five storeys in lieu of three storeys is supported as the proposed height does not exceed the maximum height of the existing building, and as the upper portions of the building have been set back from the boundaries with proposed planting in planters to mitigate the impacts of height.”

However CBCRA chair Chris Willemse said the previous building (now demolished) had been too high and could therefore not be used as a precedent for future development.

He said the CBCRA is preparing a legal challenge to the city’s development approval. The association successfully halted a previous city-approved development in Camps Bay because of a height and setback deviation. The unfinished building is now an eyesore among upmarket homes.

Willemse and other critics of the project believe the city should do more to retain the quasi-suburban character of seaside enclaves such as Camps Bay and Kalk Bay, to protect them from “skyscraper creep ”— evidenced by ribbon development on parts of the Atlantic seaboard and False Bay.

“The [development] conditions for Camps Bay are special — not applicable for the whole city. Three-storey [restriction] is only applicable to Camps Bay. If you have these special rules then why do you break them?” Willemse said.

Camps Bay resident Kim Faclier, who lives adjacent to the hotel site, said the development should not be at the cost of spatial integrity. “Having grown up in Camps Bay, I know change is inevitable, and construction and development is a given. But for any development there needs to be respect of height restrictions. The integrity of the suburb must always be adhered to,” Faclier said.