A new drive to establish a City Improvement District (CID) in Durbanville town centre is well underway.
A steering committee of the proposed CID is exploring ways to enhance the Durbanville Central Business District (CBD) for residents and visitors.
Residents and business people are now urged to complete a short survey to make their opinion matter and establish the need for a CID in town.
This latest attempt to register a CID follows after at least five campaigns that have been lodged to establish a CID over the past 10 years.
Steering committee
According to Tommy van Zyl, chair of the steering committee and also treasurer of Durbanville Business, the process was restarted early last year by a group of business people in town.
They have applied for the foundation of a CID, which was approved by the City of Cape Town in August and September last year.
“The borders of the CID were drawn up in April last year. This will be a commercial CID and does not include any private residences,” he says.
Although he is also the Western Cape strategy coordinator for AfriForum, this project is not an AfriForum project, but only supported by the organisation, Van Zyl says.
The borders of the proposed CID will be Church Street in the south, St John’s Road in the west, Koeberg Road (M58) in the north and De Villiers Road in the east.
It will include two schools, as well as the Durbanville race course.
Public meetings
The public participation process with a survey will be followed by a first public meeting, followed by a second public meeting about 20 days later.
The meetings will be followed with a voting process by the about 365 business owners in the CBD.
Van Zyl says the final application must be submitted to the City of Cape Town in October this year. If approved, the CID will start to operate in the new financial year in July next year.
“The CID will operate on three legs – safety and security, social services, and greening and enhancement of the area. Plans must be submitted for all these activities. We hope to engage existing organisations to tender, for example MES to tender for the social services,” Van Zyl says.
The other steering committee members are Alwyn Loubser, Leendert Hols, Neil Geldenhuys and Pieter Koen, chair of Durbanville Business.
Resident of Durbanville and busines people can take part in the survey at https://www.research.net/r/Durbanville_CBD
