Sonya Rademeyer and Elmarie Malek, Somerset West
“We as a collective have an amazing opportunity to plan and design a development where we could be putting the needs of our children first, and create a state of the art flag-ship project, given the opportunity to work jointly together.”
This is one of many public comments submitted in response to the City of Cape Town’s planned mixed use development application for Paardevlei Precinct 2.
A successful “public outcry” – resulting from collaborative efforts, including the Bolander placing our letter on May 17, and over 50 public comments received by the deadline of May 22 – has resulted in the City of Cape Town extending the deadline for public comment until June 5.
Members of Facebook page FB FriendsofPaardevleiDam are drafting a proposal for a People’s Plan for Paardevlei for submission to the City of Cape Town ahead of the new deadline of Monday June 5 with respect to the immediate area around the dam as an alternative to the current plan for high density housing (2 400 dwellings) on the water’s edge, and 11 car repair garages on existing farmland.
Imagine a state-of-the-art child and family centred park within natural surroundings with walking, jogging and cycling paths, fynbos gardens, picnic areas, an open-air amphitheatre, a tea garden, a local craft market, eco-environmental and historical trails, a bird hide, and more, as has been done in other parts of the city, like the Greenpoint Urban Park (www.capetown.gov.za) and Princess Vlei (www.princessvlei.org).
Together we can make this dream a reality through a community collaborative partnership.
We invite our Helderberg basin community organisations and members of the public to join hands in forming a partnership forum for giving shape and substance to a People’s Plan for Paardevlei and help the City of Cape Town to work with us for meeting the needs of our children and families.
The draft proposal will be on FriendsofPaardevlei Facebook page as of tomorrow, Thursday June 1, and comments can be placed on the page. Interested persons can also contact us at elmarie1962@telkomsa.net and sonyarademeyer@telkomsa.net
Comments and objections to the current plans can be emailed directly to the City of Cape Town to comments_objections.helderberg@capetown.gov.za, or call 021 444 4619, from 8am to 2.30pm.