John Rabie is the entrepreneur who transformed the way South Africans build houses. With humble beginnings, he is now known as the man who took 1.25 million square meters of marshy wasteland on the outskirts of Cape Town and turned it into the $1.95-billion Century City.
It’s hard to believe that this co-founder of the Rabie Property Group is the same humble man who was painting buildings in Sea Point 40 years ago, along with his longtime business partner, Leon Cohen.
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&#8220;I started as painter with Leon. We formed a painting business. We said to ourselves, ‘hang on a second, let&#8217;s start building’. In those days, there was plenty of land in the southern suburbs in Constantia,” says Rabie.
From his office in Cape Town’s foreshore, filled with memorabilia of his property developments and school photographs, you can see why Rabie has stood at the test of time.
“It took me 40 years. There is no instant gratification to wealth. Property development is not a one-day game, it’s a five-day game,” says Rabie, using cricket analogy. “It’s taking a view for the future. Because we build buildings not for five years but because we want to live in them for 10 or 20 years.”
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Along with Century City, Rabie has been involved in other developments around Cape Town, including Marconi Beam, Westlake Estate, Royal Ascot and Big Bay.
Rabie is also responsible for cluster house developments. This started when Rabie didn&#8217;t have the capital to build the houses from scratch. Instead he came up with the idea of plot and plan, which allowed house hunters to pay a deposit on a plot of land for cheap and wait for Rabie to build it.
&#8220;In those days people bought their own little plots and then they built their houses. So we said ‘ok, we can build these houses on your plot for cheaper’. Then we said ‘hang on a minute, let’s take it to the next level’. We acquired five plots on Constantia, I think we paid R10,000 ($850) for a stand at the time – can you believe that, in Constantia of all places? We said ‘let&#8217;s build a house, finish it and furnish it and landscape it’.&#8221;
The idea took off in the 1980s and Rabie&#8217;s team was building five houses a month.  Soon it was building villages, over vast areas of Cape Town&#8217;s southern suburbs. It then moved on to show houses, giving buyers an idea of what the house would look like, right down to the kitchen sink.
&#8220;You know, what people struggle with is the design. How the house is going to look when the building is done, the vision. We had a beautiful brochure with eight or 10 designs, because the individual owned the plot we could sign a building contract and build that house that they chose.&#8221;
Back in his office, Rabie admits to being a hoarder. He has dozens of books with newspaper clippings and advertisements. It is a personal archive of 40 years of developing property. His proudest moment came in 2004, when he bought into a project that wanted to turn a marshy wasteland of 1.25 million square meters into a mini city.
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&#8220;The biggest boom to hit this country was in 2001 to 2007 – the world exploded. That was the biggest property boom we&#8217;d ever seen,&#8221; he says.
&#8220;It changed Rabie Property Group, because we now had a city.&#8221;
Fourteen years and an investment of more than $1.95 billion later, Century City has taken shape. These days it is a city-within-a-city; a place where one can work, live, shop and relax. The precinct hosts more than 500 businesses, 4,000 residential homes and is known for its clean and safe environment.
<div id="attachment_35845" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35845" class="wp-image-35845 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Century-City.jpg 1154w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />The Apex forms the focal point of the new Century City Square in Cape Town. Photo supplied</div>
&#8220;The great thing about Century City is it&#8217;s like a jigsaw puzzle, as the markets change you can change it to have a bit more commercial, a bit more residential areas. When I go inside the conference center or along the canals, I have to pinch myself,&#8221; says Rabie.
One of the latest developments in Century City has been the introduction of a Marriott hotel, the signature brand of the world’s largest hotel group, Marriott International. This brand was ushered in through the recent conversion of the African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel to the Cape Town Marriott Hotel Crystal Towers.
“It’s extremely positive for Century City to showcase a global giant like Marriott. The credibility of the brand internationally adds gravitas to our tenant directory, and we will no doubt see many more visitors from around the world coming to Century City because of the presence of a hotel under this brand,” says Cohen.
By 2010, Rabie had thought he had done all he could do in property. He was traveling abroad when he noticed a trend of inner-city revival. He saw major cities, like Sydney, were rejuvenating derelict buildings in city centers and repurposing them for residential living.
He immediately thought Cape Town could do the same. So, he embarked on co-founding Signatura, the private label property company, to do just that.
&#8220;No one was thinking of inner-city revival at that time. It was going to be very important for Cape Town to have hospitality linked to residential – in other words, intertwined. Our first project was the Radisson. We converted the office into the hotel and put 175 apartments on top, but the apartments have the use of the hotel facilities, the gym etc. That was hugely successful,&#8221; says Rabie.
<div id="attachment_35846" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35846" class="size-medium wp-image-35846" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-300x212.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="212" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-300x212.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-600x424.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-768x543.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final-1024x724.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Radisson-Final.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Rabies ambitious Radisson development in Cape Town. Photo supplied.</div>
Signatura recently completed the upscaling of central city landmark, the Safmarine building. It was transformed into an ambitious $100-million residential and hotel development known as The Radisson Blu Hotel and Residence.
It caters to South Africa&#8217;s growing upper middle class who are eager for luxury living close to the city and the ocean. What stands out for Rabie is the way in which social media has changed the way people buy property.
&#8220;We used to have to put flags up on Sunday at 10 o&#8217;clock. We&#8217;d get dressed up in our work clothes. That’s how we did it. If you didn’t get people into show houses on a Sunday, you didn’t sell. With social media, it changed dramatically. You hardly see us advertising in the press anymore because social media is so incredibly strong. We get 10 to 15 leads every day from people on the internet wanting to know about our developments.&#8221;
In five years, Signatura has rejuvenated more than 20 buildings in and around Cape Town – achieving over $500 million in sales.
It seems Rabie made the right decision to give up painting houses to build them instead.

John-Rabie-online

From Painting Houses To Building A $1.95-Billion Development

June 3, 2015 is a day etched into the memory of Ghanaians. It is a day that floods swept through Accra in hours, claiming more than 200 lives, gutting buildings, destroying cars and setting off a devastating explosion at a petrol station.
Similar to the previous days, it started raining at dawn. On this particular day, I remember stepping out of my flat and saw rainfall heavier than usual. I rushed to the car ready to face the day with my designated driver, my manager. We were running late for our meetings and decided on a route that would save time, the Kwame Nkrumah Circle. The already eroded roads had started forming pools and the rain made it impossible to see clearly. Through my impaired vision, I could see the heavy wind blow billboards over and informal traders scurry to nearby shelters to escape the incessant thrashing of the downfall.
<div id="attachment_3863" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3863" class="size-medium wp-image-3863" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AP20150606APS3396-1024x683-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Ghana Gas Station Explosion</div>
The police officers who normally stood on the roadside to do the job of the faulty traffic lights had chosen to neglect their post. This created a massive jam.
As we battled through the sluggish traffic, chaos erupted and a mass of people ran towards us in panic. Amid the confusion, we decided to follow suit and turn the car around but the congestion made it impossible. Up ahead, I saw cars floating in the murky water that was overflowing from the poorly built drainage systems. Across the road, a woman running towards shelter with her baby, lost her footing in the thigh-high water and disappeared. Two men dived in to try and save them.
Panic set in and I realized all the cars around us had suddenly become floatation devices. We decided to make a dash for it but the doors were jammed. My manager was yelling for help but gave up. As the cold water rushed in the car, my manager frantically tried to break the window. Our fear rose with the water.
On my left, I saw two women vanish under the water as they were hit by a floating car. I thought to myself, “this is it Peace, get ready to die.” As the water reached waist level, the welcome sound of shattering glass came. Three young men had smashed the back window and were yelling for us to climb out. The air was heavy with trepidation. People on the rooftops were screaming out directions to people on the street turned rescuers. We dragged our feet through the gushing water and howling wind to reach safety. Some were standing on the roofs of their cars, trying to use them as lifeboats.
As we continued moving away from the car, I lost my footing, on what was once a sturdy pavement, into what felt like a bottomless pit. I had dropped into an open gutter and felt a sharp pain in my back. The brown water turned red as everything faded to black.
I woke up in a hospital bed. My manager, who helped save me, told me that I fell in a ditch, was suspended by barbed wire and impaled by a floating car part. A couple of stitches, several staples and two blood transfusions later, I am lucky to be able to recount the event.
The next day, a stone’s throw from where we almost died, many others did. A petrol station was engulfed in flames following an explosion. It is thought that petrol seeped into the flood water and was ignited by a spark from a generator. It resulted in the deaths of more than 200 people sheltering from torrential rain. I wondered if it had been any of the women I saw the day before, the women who believed they had made it to safety.
I will never forget these days. I know how close I came to joining the hundreds that lost their lives. I am both angry and sad. I’m angry because there is no reason that proper drainage systems could not have been built in an area which has a history of flooding. I’m sad because I know the problem will not be solved soon.
I am also proud to be a Ghanaian. I witnessed heroism from strangers who risked their lives to save people they did not know. I saw a community pull together to fight for the most fundamental human right, the right to life. The media might forget these tragedies, I won’t. To those unsung heroes, Ghana is forever indebted to you.

Suspended By Barbed Wire AND Impaled On A Car Part

The construction of one of the world’s most futuristic buildings, in terms of kindness to the environment, happened as an afterthought to the R22.5 billion ($2.6 billion) deal that four years ago saw UK-based multinational cellular operator Vodafone gather a 65% controlling share in South Africa’s Vodacom.
Vodafone’s Innovation Centre, at its headquarters in Midrand, Johannesburg, opened at the beginning of this year. It is a seemingly unremarkable single-story, glass-and-wood structure designed to accommodate only around 12 researchers; but it has been awarded six stars by The Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA)— the only such rating achieved in this country and indeed all of Africa. The six stars denote it as a world leader.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1290" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_7120-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
The idea for the building took shape shortly after the mammoth cellular-phone share deal, when the two companies’ technical teams were to be integrated. According to Suraya Hamdulay, Vodacom’s executive head of corporate citizenship, the interdisciplinary task team planning the merger decided it would be nice for the innovators to do their research inside an innovative building.
The whole exercise fitted with Vodafone’s stated intention to, by 2020, reduce its carbon emissions by 50% against its 2006/7 baseline of 1.23 million tons, and to reduce emissions in its emerging markets by 20% in 2015 against a 2010/11 baseline.
It was decided to locate the facility in South Africa because—being both an emerging and a developed economy—it would help consolidate the group’s efforts across the board.
With its six-star rating, the Vodafone facility is at the spearhead of a growing trend in South Africa—as in most of the world’s developed countries and a few developing economies—towards environmentally friendly building practices. The global tendency took a decisive turn in 2002 with the launch of the World Green Building Council, a federation of national councils that was joined by South Africa’s in 2007.
The GBCSA says, on its website, that buildings are estimated to consume 40-50% of the world’s energy through their construction and operation. Green buildings can more than halve the energy use of conventional buildings, with similar reductions in potable water usage, runoff to sewer and solid waste. The council’s purpose is to promote green building, act as a resource center, develop and operate a green-building rating system and improve knowledge and skills through training and education.
The features that had it award the Vodafone Innovation Centre its highest rating are remarkable for their novelty and also for their simplicity. Designed with the help of WSP Environment &amp; Energy South Africa, part of a leading international company, the innovation started with the very choice of a site and its preparation.
The building, reminding one somewhat of an unassuming wildlife lodge, is situated on what used to be a parking lot serving Vodacom’s adjacent headquarters. In the construction, as much use as possible was made of waste and discarded materials. Soil excavated for the foundations and second-hand tiles and reject stock bricks were used in the landscaping of the mainly indigenous garden and its pathways.
The whole purpose was to limit the use of concrete and cement to a minimum. Three layers of compacted soil separated by recycled plastic membranes form the foundations. Gabions resting on the layered foundations support the floor. Outside, air is cooled as it filters through the rock-filled wire-mesh baskets that form the gabions and serve to ventilate the building through vents along the sides.
The double-paned glass walls serve a variety of purposes. They reduce heat from outside and allow hot air trapped between them to escape through vents in the roof. By letting in natural light they limit the use of electric lighting. Bright light is dimmed by the building’s extended eaves and automatic blinds shut out direct sunlight. The see-through walls also create a sense of translucency, especially for those working inside who are able to look out into the garden.
Rain water from the roof goes into tanks from which it is used to flush the toilets and irrigate the garden. Inside the building is a small atrium serving as a wetland through which water from the sinks and basins get purified and re-used to flush the toilets.
The air-conditioning is done by an intricate system of solar tubes on the roof that pipe water into an absorption chiller and cooling coils from which it is passed through pipes in the floor and through cooling grids that are mounted in pot plants for the condensation to wet the plants. A spread of 292 photovoltaic panels, generating 230 kWh a day, drive fans that cool air by blowing it over the cold pipes.
No power-storage batteries are used. Through what is called virtual storage, excess electricity is diverted to Vodacom’s adjacent building to reduce its use of Eskom (the national electricity supplier) power by day. At night, the favor is returned in decidedly unequal measure by passing back such small amount of Eskom power as the Innovation Centre might need.
Even though it is mainly solar power that gets used, everything is designed to limit consumption. LED lighting is linked to motion sensors so that when nobody is in the building the lights will automatically switch off. The researchers work on laptops as they have been found to be the most power efficient.
“We are engineers, we have to have coffee. So we looked around for the most power-efficient coffee machine we could find,” says Etienne Gerber, the center’s program manager.
<h4>There&#8217;s a big new trend in building</h4>
The trend towards greener building is gathering pace in South Africa, as in a good many other countries, despite hard financial times. Since its establishment five years ago, the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA) has already awarded 23 star ratings to buildings around the country. A further 34 buildings are in the pipeline for registration. 
Rosanne Mitchell, the council’s marketing executive, says as consumers become more discerning and environmentally conscious, they will be the drivers of sustainable design and construction as well as greener building occupation. The building industry itself is changing. Green building practices used to be implemented by only a few companies. Now these are practically standard practice. 
Vodafone’s Innovation Centre in Midrand is the only building to have been given six stars. Five more buildings have been awarded five stars for excellence, and seventeen have received four stars, which is for best practice. 
The five five-star buildings are the Standard Bank in Rosebank, Absa Towers West in Johannesburg, the Aurecon Century City Campus in Cape Town, Millennia Park in Stellenbosch and the Sisonke District Offices in Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal. 
The GBCSA has over 1,000 member companies broadly representative of the private and some public sectors. Apart from developing its rating system, it has put more than 3,000 people through green building courses and accredited 400 green-building practitioners. 
Mitchell says there are strong indications that more and more the construction industry and the corporate world will see green building as an inevitable part of business as usual. As with fire safety standards and disability access, sustainability will soon be taken for granted. 
According to several recent surveys, it will become just the way we build.

Tag: Buildings

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

From Painting Houses To Building A $1.95-Billion Development

Suspended By Barbed Wire AND Impaled On A Car Part

Africa’s Greenest Star