People's Post Claremont | Rondebosch - 10 November 2020

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CLAREMONT | RONDEBOSCH

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A WARM WELCOME BACK Having been closed since April last year for a R4 million facelift, the Rondebosch Public Library, has once again reopened. Pictured are Zahid Badroodien, Mayco member for community service and health; Robyn De Villiers, children’s librarian; Fezile Hlangana, library and information service: marketing and communications; Lameez Taliep, assistant librarian; and Yvonne Naidoo, principal librarian. Patrons of the library can now make use of its drop-and-collect service. The library also caters for limited study and SmartCape capacity due to level one lockdown regulations. See page 3 for the full story.

UPPER CLAREMONT

Heritage protection drive NETTALIE VILJOEN NETTALIE.VILJOEN@MEDIA24.COM

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mbracing the future, preserving our past. While seemingly opposites, these two phrases stand side by side in one sentence – very much like the City of Cape Town’s densification strategy on the one hand, and residents’ desire to protect the heritage resources of their communities on the other. Ensuring these two forces meet instead of clash is the challenge facing many suburbs located in the south. According to an executive summary of the City’s densification strategy, densification means “making more efficient use of our limited urban space – in other words, finding a place for more people to live and work”. Areas targeted for densification include development and activity routes, such as Main Road; activity streets (a local street section of concentrated activity) such as Newlands Main Street, and major economic opportunity zones such as Claremont/Wynberg Central Business. The summary explains this can be done in

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Cape Town by building townhouses, second dwellings (“granny flats”), semi-detached houses, double storeys, low-rise apartments, and, “where appropriate, higher-rise flats”. However, it also states that when urban planners talk about higher density living, they do not mean there should be “high-rise buildings everywhere or strange-looking tall buildings in the middle of residential areas”. “In some areas, three-storey to five-storey buildings will fit in well with a neighbourhood’s character; in other areas, higher-rise flats are already common, so another similar building would not look out of place. In many suburban areas, subdivisions and second dwellings are almost ‘invisible’ and do not change the feel of the neighbourhood at all,” the summary reads. Yet it was exactly the construction of such “strange-looking tall buildings” in the middle of a residential area which led to the formation of the Upper Claremont Residents and Ratepayers Association (UCRRA). A registered heritage conservation body with Heritage Western Cape (HWC), the UCRRA was founded in 2017 by local residents as a result of poor developments which negatively affected the heritage resources and the

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townscape of the area, explains Alexis van der Merwe, chair of the association. One example is The Collingwood, a five-storey block, set on the northern side of Osborne Road in Upper Claremont. The block of flats, which replaced a grade III single-storey structure between 2015 and 2016, today stands shoulder to shoulder with single- and doublestorey residential buildings alongside it on the northern side of Osborne Road and the Bishoplea Park. The western adjacent singlestorey plot was recently sold to a developer, paving the way for yet another high-rise building set to rise in the area. Concerned with the negative impact these large-scale developments were having on the heritage resource and character of the area, the community and interested and affected parties approached the UCRRA with support for its heritage survey of the area and the application for formal heritage protection of the Upper Claremont Village area via a heritage protection overlay zone (HPOZ) procedure. “We now have approximately 200 people, all local residents, who have added their names and support to the UCRRA’s drive for formal protection,” Van der Merwe adds. According to City’s Bo-Kaap HPOZ guide-

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line document, “an HPOZ is the mechanism for the protection of heritage places that the City considers to be conservation-worthy in terms of its heritage strategies. The tangible and intangible aspects of heritage places are acknowledged. The main drive of the HPOZ is the management of the physical/built aspects of heritage: these can be the physical components of traditional practices and traditions”. Van der Merwe describes it as a means to protect and manage the heritage resources of the city. “Densification and development will happen and is required. However, it needs to be managed in a way that it does not damage the heritage resources of this special area.” The first step in the HPOZ assessment process requires the completion of a heritage audit or survey. Having done its background planning and research, with input from the City’s environment heritage resource management department (EHRM), Heritage Western Cape (HWC), as well as specialist heritage professionals as to the correct procedures and processes, the UCRRA survey team (consisting of 10 people) began work on the heritage audit in 2019. V Continued on page 2.

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