Within Cape Town’s city and suburbs there are a handful of buildings that are renowned for their unique blend of prime location and sophisticated design, those which make a remarkable statement and create genuine buzz. These are some of the finest investment opportunities in the city, and individuals with the foresight and experience – architects, developers and investors – usually snap them up before they’ve even had a chance to be marketed.
The challenge is that great properties in unique locations are harder to find. Cape Town sees unique pockets, as with Mayfair in London or Soho in New York, which are almost impossible to access by virtue of the fact that they’re already developed and maximised by those in the know.
One such pocket has just announced a rare new development, Tuynhuys, designed by Robert Silke and Partners and developed by Willbridge Property Company. Within one square kilometre of Tuynhuys, there exists the highest order of civic buildings of any major city, including The Company Gardens, St George’s Cathedral, The Cape Town High Court, Office of the Presidency, The National Library, National Gallery, National and Social History Museums, Planetarium and Parliament.
Tuynhuys will also lie just a few streets away from the anchors of the city’s energetic hub – Long, Loop and Bree Streets – connected to the bustling, eclectic mix of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and hotels, alongside the five-star restaurants – 95 on Keerom and Carne by Giorgio Nava – within the same street as Tuynhuys.
There are a number of beautiful parts of our city, but according to Silke, there is no more superb than this precinct. “I wanted to create something that was responsive and respectful to the current environment and was at least as beautiful as the properties which surrounded it. This can only be achieved through a magic relationship between a progressive and sensitive developer Willbridge Property Company, meticulous project managers and quantity surveyors BKTM, and the architect – a merge of commercial imperative and creative aspiration.”
Developing partners Brent Wiltshire and Viv Delbridge from Willbridge Property Company are excited by the immediate response. Explains Wiltshire, “Solid property investment is largely rooted in location, location, location. Cape Town has boomed from the suburbs and seaboard and crept slowly inbound over the course of the last decade to the point that the city is now a central focus of the current property spike, fortunately intersecting with the generational trend to living closer to others, connecting to a vibrant energy and community, and releasing the need for unnecessary material burdens that are costly in both time and money. It’s at this meeting point investors find a well-timed and well-placed opportunity, given that the building is part of the Urban Development Zone (UDZ) incentive. The interest has been overwhelming. This is most definitely a property to watch from a design and investment point of view.”
Tuynhuys will comprise eight levels of residential apartments – 4 penthouses, 11 two-bedroom apartments, 9 one-bedroom apartments and 21 studio flats, one basement level parking and two surface level parkings. Units were sold between R1,4 million for the studio apartments and R4,9 million for the penthouses.
