A rezoning application in this regard was lodged earlier this month and is open for objections until the last week of February.
Development envisaged by Wadanga-I-Tole Entertainment Park Pty Ltd on about 53ha in the so-called Extension 9 West in Makhado (Louis Trichardt) includes yet another shopping mall, consisting of 40 to 80 shops, a garage with servicing facilities and filling station, a gated village consisting of 200 residential units, an 80-bedroom hotel (travel lodge) and conference facilities, a “bull ring” for live entertainment and a high-tech motor showroom facility.
The Makhado Municipality accepted a tender for the development of the area north of Stubbs Street, extending between River Street and the N1, up to the southern border of the Hanglip plantation. The sale of this area to Wadanga-I-Tole was approved by the MEC.
The area was initially up for development as an upmarket residential area. That development was temporarily stalled as a result of a major protest by the local community, who objected to the envisaged massive residential development in this sensitive riverbank area, where the mountain streams connect with the town’s Greenbelt Area. The Greenbelt is a coveted and major characteristic of the town, and includes the Indigenous Tree Sanctuary as well as the Bird Sanctuary. It also forms an essential air- and noise-filtering buffer zone between the N1 highway and the western residential areas.
In the rezoning application, which is now under consideration at the municipality, there is no mention of the cable car, cultural village, game park and butterfly farm which featured prominently in the initial development proposals which prompted the sale of the area. The garage, with servicing facilities and filling station which now feature prominently, were explicitly excluded in Council’s initial conditions of acceptance.
The shopping mall and motor mall theme features are described in the motivation document as a “high-tech industrial complex, manifesting the automobile” and which would complement the entertainment and retail complex as a “leisure retail precinct”.
The document emphasises that prominent visibility from the N1 would be a major factor for the success of the envisaged mall development.
Legal opinion reflected in the document states that, because the area has already been proclaimed as a residential area, no authorisation from the environmental authorities is necessary for the proposed development. The appropriate legislation does, however, allow the environmental authorities to stop development as a result of which the environment is or may be severely damaged, endangered or detrimentally affected.