Two Bits – 09 December 2016

Everybody wants to know what is going to happen to the old Ballito Bay Mall when anchor tenants  Game and Woolworths move over to the new Junction next March.
Checkers is going to be in both centres, though I remain sceptical that will remain for long.
It’ll be something of a record for short-lived shopping centres, from its controversial opening in 2010 to ignomious fizzle in seven short years. It’s been in the hands of the business rescue people for a couple of years already, and we’ve heard no concrete plans on what will happen to the building once it’s empty.
Some think the wrecking ball would be the best solution, since already you can see great cracks in the walls as testament to the over-hasty construction schedule, but even that would be a very expensive exercise.
Several readers have proposed that it be used to house the local government offices. There has been no progress on renovating the old offices in Leonora Drive and I’m not holding my breath that it’ll happen anytime soon, so why not move the staff out of those trailers in Salt Rock? There are parts of the mall that haven’t even been used yet. And what’s more, they can offset the rent against the millions in unpaid electricity. The municipality did itself no favours in that whole fruitless exercise, but will they admit it? Hell no.
Another suggestion has been to use the roof or the basement for the town taxi rank. We’ve been told the Shell garage site is to house the new rank, so we’ll have to believe that will happen, hopefully during the coming year.
Yet another suggestion was to use a part of it for a school. I don’t think it’s a realistic place for children, but certainly a Varsity College or Damelin type operation for older students who don’t need space for sports could work very well.
The short answer is . . . nobody knows what will happen to it. Not a satisfactory situation at all, but that’s the name of the game in so many situations these days, isn’t it?
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We visited Gauteng at the weekend for the wedding of ex-Maidstone residents Mark and Anne Tucker’s youngest daughter Ruth, and every time we go there we realise how much we enjoy the small towns we have here.
I wouldn’t say we’re quite country bumpkins, it’s just that Vaalies do everything on the run. Except the traffic jams. On Friday afternoon we took 45 minutes to cover 10km, and nobody thought that exceptional. These days I get impatient if there are three cars ahead of me going up Ballito Drive.
We marvel at the new interchange going up at Umhlanga, but there must be a dozen like that in the Jo’burg-Pretoria area. And five lanes of heavy traffic either way! We lost the car in Menlyn Park centre because we couldn’t remember whether we’d parked in the orange zone or the red zone. An attack of the bumpkins, maybe?
With all the hype about transformation, it floors me that there in the middle of Pretoria are a John Vorster Drive and a Hendrik Verwoerd Drive! If they could bother to change the name of the innocuous Church St, why not John and Hendrik? Maybe they’re nostalgic. I can never understand Gau–tengers at the best of times.
I enjoyed reading about the crookery that has been uncovered in the Tshwane municipality by the new DA team, about being charged R300 (each) and more for light bulbs and ballpoint pens. Everybody’s reaction is what do you expect from the ANC, but they would be wrong. The crooks, it would appear, are wit ous from much further to the right. I hope the DA makes an example of them.
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I went to a really emotional wedding the other day. Even the cake was in tiers.