{"id":808505,"date":"2025-01-24T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=808505"},"modified":"2025-01-24T15:14:04","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T13:14:04","slug":"huge-chunk-of-cape-towns-tallest-building-is-being-sold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/property\/808505\/huge-chunk-of-cape-towns-tallest-building-is-being-sold\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge chunk of Cape Town’s tallest building is being sold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A massive stake in Cape Town’s tallest building, the Portside Tower, is being sold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The property is situated in the Cape Town City centre and stands 139 metres tall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It comprises a full city block and is bordered by Buitengracht, Hans Strijdom, Bree and Mechau Streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The property has panoramic views of the City centre, Table Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Completed in 2014, it was the first major skyscraper developed in the city’s CBD in 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also received a 5-star Green Star rating from the Green Building Council of South Africa, making it the tallest Green Building in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FirstRand, which owns FNB, RMB, Wesbank, and Old Mutual, initially owned the property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Old Mutual sold its share of the property to the Accelerate Property Fund (APF), which took on roughly 50% ownership of the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While FirstRand occupies its share of the property, APF leases office and retail space to tenants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amidst a challenging period for APF, it is now selling its stake in the skyscraper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group, which values its share at R600 million as per Bizcommunity<\/a>, is selling Portside alongside a host of other investment properties, such as the Buzz and Waterford Shopping Centres. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its latest interim financial results for the six months ended September 2024, APF said that the properties were transferred from investment properties to non-current assets held for sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sale comes as the group saw its loss after tax increase to R255 million by September 2024. The group’s basic loss per share also increased from 6.6 cents to 15.74 cents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group’s vacancies by GLA also increased from 17.7% in 2023 to 21.7% in 2024, which excludes the head lease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The property group has been severely impacted by its most significant asset, Fourways Mall, which has been struggling with high vacancies and elevated debt levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This came off the back of an expansion and revamp in 2019, where it became the largest shopping centre in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has since launched a major turnaround plan for the mall, which includes partnering with Flanagan & Gerard as the strategic asset managers and Moolman Group as the property managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strategy is to improve navigation, introduce new tenants, deploy backup power systems, optimise traffic flow and upgrade security measures\u2014all in a bid to once again make the mall a premier destination in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accelerate, which owns 50% of Fourways Mall, also raised R200 million from a rights offer, which it used to pay off debt and reposition its finances last year. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to Portside, another interesting fact is that returning US President Donald Trump owned the piece of land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to property broker Ash Mull\u00ebr<\/a>, the Trump Organisation had a 50\/50 partnership with Devland to develop a R5 billion residential and hotel development on the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the pieces of land earmarked for the development was where the FNB Portside tower now stands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images of the Portside building can be found below (Sources include: dhk Architects<\/a> and Metrum<\/a>): <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A huge ownership stake in Cape Town’s tallest building, the Portside Tower, is being sold by Accelerate Property Fund. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":795100,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12755],"tags":[12426,76,20932],"class_list":["post-808505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-property","tag-accelerate","tag-fnb","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808505"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":808547,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808505\/revisions\/808547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}