Two Bits

Inside the whale

I have an idea of what Jonah felt like when he was swallowed by the whale.
With most of the building being below ‘ground level’ so to speak, you get no idea from the road of the scale of the new Junction shopping centre. Now only five months away from opening, The Courier and Get It teams were given a guided tour last week that was simply astonishing.
If the building is like a whale cast up on the shore of our seaside village, then I felt like Jonah in the depths of its bowels as a very chirpy Tracy van Rensburg walked us up and down three levels and the length of its floors, until my legs were so tired I was relieved to be able to sit down and listen to developer Pat Flanagan and his team talk to a crowd of tenants.
It has increased in size from the original 60 000m2 to 88 000m2, with 240 stores spread over three levels, as well as three levels of parking in a mezzanine layout. By comparison, Gateway is still the monster at 220 000m2, followed by the Pavilion at 135 000m2.
It has been fascinating to watch and record the growth of Ballito over the past three decades, when the largest supermarkets were Billy and Rory’s Multisave at the Boulevard and Piet Cilliers’ small Spar where Cyber Letting is now. Barbara Millican recently brought me a copy of The Courier from 1990, when Multisave was selling bananas for 79 cents a kg, tomato sauce at R2,49 a 250 ml bottle and potatoes at 69 cents a kg. And those prices were quite high then.
Then the Rencken brothers took over the Spar and moved to the new Balvista Centre, then the smartest centre in town, and 10 years later took a deep breath and built the Lifestyle Centre. That and the development of the business park, combined with the success of Zimbali, set the town off on a whole new trajectory that is now is going into warp speed with the arrival of King Shaka airport and the continuing expansion of Umhlanga new town centre. The knock-on effect can be felt daily.
Back in the day, we had to go to Durban for almost everything, apart from your day-to-day shopping. Bulk shopping at Hyper-by-the-sea, office stationery, clothes and shoes in central Durban, as well as services like doctors and opticians. Nowadays we only visit Durban at weekends for sport, movies and live shows, and some medical services at Umhlanga. The size of my feet hasn’t changed, so I still have to shop at Men’s Shoe Centre!
With the arrival of six cinemas and a smorgasbord of restaurants – to add to the dozens we have already – I may not have to venture south more than once a year or so. What a pleasure that will be. Only the other day I was caught up in a traffic jam on the highway around Umhlanga and remembered why I left Jo’burg all those years ago!
Without a doubt the curiosity value of the new centre will put a severe strain on existing businesses for a while, but I firmly believe that businesses that trade on their strengths will retain custom in the long term. There’s an old adage that ‘business is good for business,’ and things like convenience, service and price will help existing businesses find their level – or not.
If you’re one of the people who grumble that ‘the old village has gone’, just say to yourself over and over, ‘Change is good for the soul’ and you’ll feel better. Promise.

* * *
As the coffin was being lowered into the ground at a traffic cop’s funeral, a voice from inside screams: “I’m not dead, I’m not dead. Let me out!”
The priest smiles and whispers back: “Too late pal, I’ve already done the paperwork.”