The Amdec Group acquired the 11,816m2 strip of vacant land on the Cape Town foreshore in 2015. The scheme was launched in September of that year, sold out in 14 months and construction was completed within a two-year period.
The Yacht Club comprises two apartment blocks, separated by a corridor of open space, in order to comply with the strict building regulations set by local authorities. The West block comprises 120 apartments and the AC Hotel by Marriott, while the East Block houses 50 apartments set above two floors of premium office space.
The group will also be introducing another large-scale precinct to the foreshore area in the form of the R15bn Harbour Arch precinct.
“Urban precincts such as The Yacht Club and Harbour Arch typify a growing worldwide trend evident in the likes of Canary Wharf in London, Hudson Yards in New York, and Darling Harbour in Sydney,” says James Wilson, CEO of the Amdec Group. “One of our main objectives with this transformative project was to deliver a world-class lifestyle that also offered investors an excellent return on their investment. It was therefore extremely rewarding for us to note that apartments that launched at R48,000 per m2 in 2015 had escalated in value to R75,000 per m2 by 2018, representing an impressive 50% return on costs.”
Results such as these bear testament to the Amdec Group’s decision to develop and build on a site that presented a number of physical and design-related challenges. Along with the relatively small footprint of the long narrow site, it had to contend with very strict building guidelines from the City of Cape Town in terms of retaining a view corridor out to sea and building within specific height restrictions, hence two separate buildings of different heights with a view corridor in between. Building directly onto the seawater canal also required innovative solutions.
