KZN man’s bid to halt mall work

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Published Aug 16, 2015

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A Ballito resident has gone to court to stop a R1 billion expansion to a local shopping mall because it has affected his property’s value and the access to his home.

Martin Bruce Rencken believes that developers upgrading the Ballito Junction Shopping Mall are doing so without approved plans.

He recently made an urgent plea to the Pietermaritzburg High Court to put the brakes on construction work.

The matter has since been set down for later this week.

There are five respondents, which include the developers, the KwaDukuza Municipality, and the Department of Transport.

Rencken, who is a developer himself, said his home was “up the road” from the mall. He gets to his home by way of a slip road, shared with residents of a neighbouring development. But once the mall expansions are completed, Rencken said access to their homes, via a new “link road”, would be “significantly altered”. Rencken and his neighbours would be required to use the mall entrance, which according to him will be “akin to driving through the Pavilion shopping centre” to get home.

His other concern is that the developers allegedly have not secured the necessary approval from the Department of Transport for the new link road.

“The link road has not been rezoned for it to be used as a public road and significant building is occurring without required approval,” Rencken claimed.

He also said no public meeting was arranged by the Department of Transport and developer to discuss the new road and other relevant issues.

The resident also alleged that the developers had “flagrantly” disregarded two previous “stop work” notices served on them.

Rencken said he had also made requests to the developers for their respective compliance documentation but had not received a response.

He approached the municipality and the Department of Transport for the documents he wanted but got “no joy”, said Rencken.

He alleged that the developers asked the municipality and the Department of Transport not to provide him with the documents in question, and that they complied.

He accused the municipality and the Department of Transport of “turning a blind eye” to the unlawful building work going on.

The estimated cost of the expansion, which would make the mall a “world-class regional shopping destination”, is R1.4 billion. Once completed, Ballito Junction will be six times larger than its original size. The projected completion date is March 2017.

Rencken strongly believes that the new access road would not be approved because of the negative impact it would have for residents of the area.

“The inconvenience of sharing an access road with a major shopping centre will have an adverse effect on my property value,” he said.

He justified the urgency of his application by saying that he didn’t want “a repeat of Currie Road”, where a developer was recently ordered by a high court to tear down a large portion of a multi-storey building being built in Currie Road, on Durban’s Berea, because building regulations had not been followed.

“With each day that passes further building work is being completed and it makes it more difficult to wind back the clock,” Rencken suggested.

The Sunday Tribune approached the developer and the municipality for comment but both declined, saying the matter was before the court.

The Department of Transport promised a response but the Tribune had not received it at the time of going to print.

Sunday Tribune

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