V&A Waterfront rebounds after lockdown battering
Visits to the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town have rebounded strongly in recent months, with over 90 000 visitors to the precinct in the second weekend of October.
This is more than double the roughly 40 000 level reached in June as the country entered Level 3. In an earlier update to the market, co-owner of the iconic development Growthpoint said visitor numbers had trended up to 60 000 on weekends, about 60-65% of last year’s levels.
Visitor numbers during the week are at the 38 000 a day mark, up from just 3 000 at the start of Level 3.
Growthpoint says that while corporate tenants are “honouring rental obligations”, “commercial office occupancy remains low with remote working firmly in place”. It adds that there are “indications” its office tenants intend to bring back staff, albeit on a reduced number of days per week. By lettable area, Nedbank and Allan Gray are the precinct’s top two tenants with 25 000m2 and 20 000m2 of space respectively.
Read: What’s bothering SA’s biggest landlords?
The impact of the hard lockdown and the gradual opening of the precinct in June saw footfall for the year ended June drop to around 21 million from the projected 26 million. Growthpoint says given that the lockdown hit the country at the “very peak of the tourist season”, trade-in “retail, hotels, restaurants and cruise liner traffic literally fell off the cliff to zero activity in early lockdown”.
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