Construction World December 2015

C

Professional Services

The Point, Sea Point

Special

Mention

When the V&A Waterfront was devel- oped, Sea Point’s locals and tourists flocked to the Waterfront, leaving Sea Point's restaurants and shops empty. This resulted in the slow demise and eventual collapse of business in this once bustling community. Sea Point Main Road became third world, and crime crept in. Now, revitalising Sea Point, is The Point, a massive redesign and rebuild of the old Galleria building on 76 Regent Road. The old double storey building, built in 1984, was centred around its anchor tenant, Checkers. The building has been totally trans-

formed into a light and airy nine storey shop- ping and lifestyle centre servicing all ages and incomes. Besides the completely redesigned Checkers store and various small boutique tenants, The Point also houses big brands such as Sportsman's Warehouse, Dis-Chem Pharmacy and Pick n Pay Clothing. Above the retail shops is a gym, health and lifestyle specialists, various medical practitioners and offices. The new centre now comprises almost 28 000 m² of retail and commercial space with 480 parking bays. The Point has brought new life to Sea Point and has uplifted the community and Sea Point as a whole. The existing building with a foot- print of 4 940m 2 , comprised three levels of basement parking with ground and first floor being retail and office space. About 2 600 m 2 of the ground floor was occupied by the anchor tenant, Checkers. Besides Checkers and some small line stores, the remainder of the building was vacant, and was falling into a serious state of disrepair. Due to the proposed increase in retail and commercial office space, additional undercover parking was needed to provide an off-street facility for shoppers and tenants. To this end various options were investigated of which the most obvious would have been to demolish the entire building and to start from scratch. This option was however out of the question due to the fact that Checkers had

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to remain fully operational throughout the building process. Temporarily closing and relocating Checkers was not a viable finan- cial solution. From the onset it became clear that the success of the engineering component of this project would hinge on the close collab- oration between engineers, client, project manager and contractor. Careful planning was required to ensure that Checkers shoppers were not adversely inconvenienced by the construction works. While the planning of this was expertly handled by the project managers, it was up to us to ensure that the execution thereof would be safe. To this end a special temporary access ramp was constructed to give shoppers direct access to Checkers via the B-1 parking area. A crash deck was constructed over the temporary ramp to ensure public safety. On the design side, the contractor was faced with the challenge of having no struc- tural information in terms of plans and reinforcement bending schedules for the existing structure. Only a limited amount of architectural plans could be sourced. The existing building and its structural elements therefore had to be surveyed. In order to determine the reinforcement within the existing slabs and columns, non-destructive scanning methods were utilised.

Project information • Company entering: Moroff & Kühne Consulting Engineers • Project team: Nik Moroff, Patrick Hut, Nicolaas Liebenberg • Client: Berman Brothers and HCI • Main contractor: WBHO Construction • Architect: Louis Karol • Quantity surveyor: AECOM • Structural and civil engineers: Moroff & Kühne Consulting Engineers • Electrical engineers: Louis & de Kroon Inc. • Mechanical engineer: WSP Group Africa • Wet services: Benatar Consulting • Demolition: L.O. Rall • Project value: R280-million

2 15 BEST PR O JECTS

CONSTRUCTION WORLD DECEMBER 2015