New Waterfront under the spotlight
2008-10-16
Anne Kruger
AN open house meeting to discuss the proposed Waterfront development on the Berg River in central Paarl, will be held at the Paarl Scout Hall in Klein Parys on Wednesday evening at 19:00. The redevelopment of the Parys cricket grounds as a soccer base camp and fan park, with hotel, conference centre and business park, has been approved in principal by the Drakenstein Municipal Council. The meeting is part of the public participation process undertaken at part of the environmental impact assessment. The development on the bank of the Berg River at Market Street will be located around a central sports oval, with restaurants and retail/décor centre aimed at the tourist market, a four star hotel with about 120 rooms, a conference centre, media centre, gym, wellness centre and sports science institute to the west, near the river bank. Later phases will include residential units to the south, with an office park to the east (next to a new railway station). The floodlit oval will be used as soccer fan park during the 2010 World Cup tournament with temporary seating for 3000 people. It will double as soccer training grounds should a foreign team pick Paarl as base camp (Paarl is one of six Western Cape towns officially on the base camp list, but no announcement is expected until December 2009). Should Paarl be selected as base camp by a visiting team, the team will be housed in the hotel. The oval with clubhouse will revert to a cricket field after the event. The Paarl canoe club, squash club and possibly the rugby club will be relocated to the northern side of Market Street, leaving space for the possible construction of a filling station and parking. New cricket and hockey facilities will be developed elsewhere, according to the Municipality, but no site is specified. Access to the Waterfront development will be from Market Street, with a traffic island at the intersection with Textile Street, to prevent traffic congestion. Market Street will have to be widened to four lanes, with cantilevered steel pedestrian bridges affixed to the outside of the road bridges over the Berg River and over the railway line. The R750 million project on 12 hectares will feature a boardwalk along its entire river front, passing underneath the Market Street Bridge, with restaurants overlooking the water. There will be above ground and underground parking and trees will be retained where possible. A service road skirting around the development will allow maintenance access to the Arboretum. The Paarl Waterfront Development is undertaken by Queensgate with local BEE shareholders. The sports facilities on site will revert to the Municipality after 2010. Among the issues raised in the impact study are increased traffic congestion in rush hour, the sustainability of the project after the World Cup event, objections by neighbours to the proposed filling station, and location of the development within the 50 year flood plain of the Berg River. A number of measures will be undertaken to prevent flooding of the site, including the raising of floor levels and construction of retention ponds and reed beds. Stormwater run-off will be channeled to the landscaped areas and ponds for filtration, to prevent pollution of the Berg River. The banks of the stormwater channel situated along the southern border of the site will be raised. According to the developers, it is expected that the project will have a positive economic impact and may be a catalyst for tourism and the upgrading of central Paarl. A draft impact report is currently available at Paarl and Drakenstein libraries. To register as an interested and affected party, send your contact details and comments to environmental facilitator Olivia Braaf at PO Box 692, Kuils River, 7579, fax 086-658-7676 or olivia@vodamail.co.za. Include the PWD project reference number (E12/2/3/1-B3/28-0701/08). * Another base camp tender, which was not accepted, proposed to temporarily upgrade the existing Faure Street stadium as soccer training grounds and fan park, with a residential component/hotel to be located on the adjoining tennis courts. The Megapark proposal included redevelopment of the Faure Street stadium site for residential purposes after 2010, and relocation of the stadium to a centralised sports park on agricultural land on the river bank adjoining the Parys cricket grounds, along with a residential and business component.
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