South Africa’s top luxury hotel became a deserted and dilapidated building

The Johannesburg Carlton Hotel was once the epitome of luxury and class. Today, it is nothing more than a dilapidated and empty building in the city centre.

The Carlton Hotel, part of the Carlton Centre complex, was created by two of South Africa’s most successful companies – South African Breweries and Anglo American.

The two companies secretly assembled a six-acre parcel covering five and a half city blocks for their new Carlton development.

The large and modern Carlton Centre contained a fifty-story office tower, the thirty-story luxury Carlton Hotel and a five-story Garlicks department store.

Anglo American bought out South African Breweries’ share of the project in 1969 while it was still under construction.

The Carlton Hotel opened on 1 October 1972. It featured over 600 rooms and boasted a rooftop pool, several restaurants, and upmarket retail stores.

It was the new benchmark of luxury in the city, and its Three Ships restaurant was widely ranked as the best in Johannesburg.

It was widely regarded as South Africa’s best five-star hotel and was a go-to venue for the rich and famous.

The Carlton Hotel hosted many celebrities and statesmen, including Henry Kissinger, Francois Mitterrand, Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Whitney Houston, and Mick Jagger.

It also hosted numerous important business and political meetings, including one between Harry Oppenheimer and Anton Rupert.

Their conference in 1976 focussed on urban renewal and building a black middle class in the country to protect the existing system.

In November 1979, former South African Prime Minister P.W. Botha convened a gathering at the Carlton Hotel of the entire cabinet and heads of government departments.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela also hosted a cocktail party for Paul Simon before his concert tour of South Africa.

Mandela also held his 75th birthday celebration in the hotel’s ballroom in 1993, attended by over 650 guests.

The decline of Johannesburg and the end of the Carlton Hotel

The decay of Johannesburg’s central business district and crime, which chased companies out of the area, caused the Carlton Hotel’s demise.

New business districts like Sandton and Rosebank rose to prominence and the Carlton Hotel struggled to fill rooms.

Anglo American closed the main hotel tower in December 1997 after losing $4 million on the Carlton alone that year. Its contents were sold to the Protea Hotel at Gold Reef City.

Transnet bought the Carlton Centre, including the hotel, from Anglo in 1999 for R33 million. The office tower and shopping centre remain in use, but the hotel has been empty since 1998.

In 2016, former Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba called for the once-iconic Carlton Hotel to be revamped to its former glory. However, it did not happen.

In 2018, Transnet moved its staff to a building in Midrand to enable the Carlton Centre to be revamped.

However, the renovations never happened, and Transnet announced it would try to sell the building for R900 million in 2023.

The sale of the Carlton Centre fell through after bidders could not produce evidence of funds to back their bids.

Transnet now plans to refurbish the centre itself, including the hotel. It plans to convert it into affordable housing and lease 3,000 square meters to Shoprite.

Headline image credit: Axel Bührmann

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