OVERVIEW
Construction and property The shopping mall trend continues to grow.
A
big new development on Oxford Road in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosebank says a lot about the South African construction and property sector. The 300 000m² Oxford Parks mixed-use development by Intraprop began construction in 2017 and the first phase is expected to be valued at about R1-billion. Firstly, South Africans love shopping malls. The South African Council of Shopping Centres calculates that the country has the sixthhighest number of shopping malls in the world. R2-billion was recently spent on Menlyn Park in Pretoria to expand it to 177 000m² of gross lettable space while the Gateway Theatre of Shopping in Durban, South Africa’s second-biggest mall, will spend R750-million in 2018. Limpopo’s provincial capital Polokwane has had the super-regional Mall of the North since 2011. Secondly, development often follows existing patterns (RosebankSandton is already the richest and densest retail and office precinct in Africa). Many of South Africa’s biggest firms have their headquarters in this area: BPSA will take up residence in Oxford Parks. Thirdly, the
concept of “lifestyle” malls (combining apartments with office, entertainment and retail space) has caught on. The best known of these is Johannesburg’s Melrose Arch. Finally, the Oxford Parks project illustrates a big shift in the construction sector away from large conglomerates towards smaller, black- empowered
SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS 2019
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SECTOR INSIGHT More South Africans live in flats than ever before.
