Strange as it may seem, the V&A Waterfront began as a state initiative, not a single developer’s vision.
In 1987, a government committee recommended redeveloping Cape Town’s old docklands around the Victoria and Alfred basins into a mixed-use precinct that kept a working harbour at its core. The cabinet approved the plan in 1988, and Transnet set up Victoria & Alfred Waterfront (Pty) Ltd as a subsidiary to run it.
In 1989, bars such as Ferrymans Tavern, Quay 4 and Bertie’s Landing (opened by yachtsman Bertie Reed) moved into old harbour buildings and gave the place its first real buzz, just as South Africa entered a period of major political change.
From there it grew steadily; heritage buildings were restored rather than demolished, hotels and museums were added through the 1990s, ownership shifted to a 50/50 consortium between Growthpoint Properties and the Public Investment Corp via the Government Employees Pension Fund in 2011, and the old grain silos were reborn as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in 2017.
David Jack was the V&A’s first CEO, and University of Cape Town economist Brian Kantor was founding chair (1988-2001). David Green took over as CEO in 2009 and ran it for nearly 17 years. He is widely credited for turning the V&A into the globally recognised destination it is today. Graham Wood took over at the beginning of this year.
Wood is managing arguably the country’s most significant tourist asset. And looking out from the recently revamped InterContinental Table Bay Hotel, construction activity in several directions underscores the scale of transformation at the Waterfront. Almost everywhere you look, something is being torn down, built up or reimagined.
The redevelopment, centred on the Granger Bay expansion, involves reclaiming 3.81ha of land to the west of the precinct for mixed-use development, public amenities and coastal protection. The estimated cost is R20bn-R24bn, matching the entire Waterfront’s estimated R23bn value. Funding is by the precinct’s joint owners.
Wood came to the CEO role from consulting and before that from Sun International, where he spent nearly two decades, the last five as COO.
The luxury retail expansion is most visible at the moment.
For example, Rolex now trades from a gleaming new standalone boutique, and Louis Vuitton is moving from a 340m² store to one of 560m². It signals the kind of long-term institutional confidence luxury houses do not extend without conviction about the market they’re operating in. The new stores that have opened are already posting trading numbers above what they achieved before.
Around the corner, the Edition Hotel, the country’s first in that group, is due to open in October. It will aim to offer luxury hospitality without the formality often associated with five-star hotels. The Edition preopening team is already at work. The culinary vision is taking shape around chef Phil Carmichael, who spent seven years with Jason Atherton at the London Edition.
Nearby, the Superyacht Marina opens at the end of October. Wood is careful to frame this not merely as an amenity for the wealthy but as a stimulus for Cape Town’s entire boat-building and repair ecosystem, making the harbour a viable port of call for vessels that bypass the facility at present. It’s a working harbour with large and small boats; in some cases, families have been fishing these seas for generations.
In the restaurant space, the precinct is also reshuffling. An upmarket Italian restaurant called Isabella’s is filling what Wood identifies as a gap in the offering. The Time Out Market is evolving: a new Cape Malay concept is replacing an outgoing one, and Zuney Burgers — installed where De Vrije Burger once traded — is already outperforming expectations. Le Bistrot de JAN at the newly revamped InterContinental Table Bay Hotel is trading well and gaining traction.
But the renovation of the precinct, substantial as it is, is almost a footnote compared to what is being planned beyond it.
The V&A has approval for an additional 440,000m² of development bulk.
A built-to-rent residential development of 160 apartments opens in June next year. Next to it, a retirement development of 147 high-end apartments is designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the UK specialist in retirement complexes. The offering will include an indoor pool, sauna, gym, medical services and 14 memory care units. The development launches at the end of July and is targeted for occupation in early 2028.
Beyond that, the full Granger Bay development will eventually add 6,000 new households to the precinct. That in turn will require a neighbourhood’s worth of services, and Wood is already mapping them: a medical precinct with possibly a day hospital along Beach Road at the back of Granger Bay; some form of educational offering; and expansion of the oversubscribed coworking Workshop 17 facility. It’s hoped that, following environmental impact studies, approval for the full reclamation will come by the end of next year.
A 6,000m² office development breaks ground this month. Conversations with large corporates about further commercial space are ongoing. And the aquarium is expanding its classrooms and adding a penguin exhibit.
Of the additional bulk, 55% must be residential and 10% of the total must be affordable housing — about 900 rentable units for such households.
Wood is clear that the young professionals, junior managers and hospitality workers employed at the precinct should be able to live there too. “It’s about accessibility and inclusivity,” he says. “Not just building a superyacht marina and playing in the luxury segment.”
So far, so good. Foot count and retail spend are up. International arrivals to Cape Town grew 3.7% in the first quarter, which Wood finds encouraging given that March coincided with the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, which disrupted the all-important Gulf aviation routes.
North American visitors are down about 7%, but Germany is up 21% and the UK is tracking a few points higher. Domestic arrivals surged 11% in the quarter, and arrivals from the rest of Africa — Angola, Zimbabwe and Mauritius — are showing growth.
April softened slightly, hurt by the absence of an extended school holiday and a run of poor weather, but Wood is not rattled. “Given the madness that’s going on in the world,” he says, “I think we’re very grateful.”
Running beneath all of this, literally, is the unglamorous but essential work of replacing a century-old infrastructure. The V&A already supplies 90% of its own water through a desalination plant. A power-purchase agreement close to finalisation will mean that by early next year, about 70% of electricity will come from renewable sources.
The full Granger Bay development will connect the Sea Point Promenade, the 7km oceanfront walkway from Mouille Point to Bantry Bay, with the breakwaters all the way to the swing bridge into the city. The bay itself will be publicly accessible for swimming, snorkelling and kayaking, among other activities.
“The fact that we’ve got a real, active, working harbour is unique,” Wood says. “Some of the other waterfronts in the world are just marinas.” The integration of that working harbour — its grit, its noise, its real economic function — provides, he argues, the irreplaceable character of the place.
Wood’s job, as he describes it, is to hold all of this in tension — the luxury and the accessible, the new and the working, the ambitious development and the precinct’s obligation to remain a genuine destination for all of Cape Town.
Originally from Durban, he spent his working career in Sun City and then Joburg; he says the relationship between private and public sectors in Cape Town is unlike anything he has encountered in South Africa. And he has, he acknowledges, inherited a lot of moving parts.
A chartered accountant, Wood was initially interested in golf tourism and so pursued hospitality — and found his vocation. What he says he brings, beyond the obvious strategic experience, is a hotelier’s obsession with front-of-house: are the umbrellas up at 8.30 in the morning? Is the varnish current? Are the staff behaving as ambassadors or just as employees? It’s the small disciplines, applied at scale, across a precinct where 30,000 people show up to work every day.
Wood says that in 10 years, about 60% of the available development bulk will have been built out. There will probably be room for one more ultra-luxury hotel in Granger Bay, though the brand has not been decided.
For all the scale and complexity, for Wood it’s about the founding principles of the V&A, established when the precinct was transferred from Transnet. It’s very much about accessibility — no gates, no entrance fee, no single point of entry.
Jane Meyer, co-ordinator of the Mouille Point Ratepayers’ Association, says the development plans seem exciting, “but obviously there’s going to be a lot of traffic and disruption — particularly because the construction materials for the Granger Bay development, including sand, rock and rubble, will be coming in at night. We’ll be monitoring it from a disturbance perspective, and the developers have indicated they’re open to hearing about any issues and will take them on board.”
A famous flaw to the Cape Town city experience is traffic flow; between the mountain and the sea, there’s no room for more roads. Wood’s message is that traffic is a city-wide and provincial challenge, not one that can be solved simply by widening roads around the Waterfront.
Part of the solution must be about getting more people onto rail, buses and taxis and out of private cars. And the development of Granger Bay will combine homes, hotels, offices, recreation and public amenities in one precinct, with the intent to reduce the need for separate car trips rather than generate more of them.