Construction World July 2019

MARKETPLACE

THE CONSTRUCTION CEOWHO TALKS OF PEOPLE, NOT PROFITS

Among the images of forklift trucks and office décor in a slideshow to celebrate the opening of a new mixed-use development in Cape Town, came pictures of inspirational quotes and exhortations to think positive thoughts. By Lesley Stones

by investors including the PIC, and while rivals are contracting or imploding, it’s already busy on an even more ambitious project called Harbour Arch, a R15-billion investment in Cape Town similar to its Melrose Arch property in Johannesburg. In total it has 5 000 residential units and 5 000 retirement homes under construction or planned, creating thousands of construction jobs. Often the people who are most optimistic about South Africa are those who live here by choice, rather than by birth. Wilson (51), moved here with his parents when he was 16, and runs Amdec with his father John, the Group’s chairman. “I understand why people are frustrated about the issues of the day, like crime and security and government corruption and the lack of service delivery, and I really do appreciate those frustrations. They frustrate me too, but having lived in a different country and being exposed to two ways of living my life, I choose to live here,” he said. “I also think I can do more for society living here than I can do living in the UK. There’s not a lot I could do in the UK to change people’s lives, but there’s a lot I can do here to change people’s lives and that’s part of the reason I’m

James Wilson,

the CEO of the Amdec Group.

A mdec Group CEO James Wilson talked about the swanky new Yacht Club, then asked his audience to smile more often, be thoughtful and forgive people, find their true purpose in life and look for the positive in negative situations. “Positive things happen to positive people. Find what it is in life that motivates you and follow it and be positive about this country, please,” Wilson urged. It wasn’t what you expect from a property launch, but it’s an attention-grabbing detour. “There is a lot of pessimism around in SA right now and it frustrates me because we have a great country and we need to talk it up, but we keep talking it down,” he added. “I’d suggest to each of you that we start developing optimistic habits. Be inspiring, so people will be inspired by what you do.” It’s easy to be optimistic when you are wealthy, the man next to me quipped quietly, and I put that excellent point to Wilson when we chatted later. “It’s also very easy when you’ve had some level of success and built a fairly large business to relocate your wealth to other parts of the world,” he said. “It’s just as easy to be negative and relocate yourself elsewhere, so it’s become a theme of my public speaking now to try and talk people up about the future of this country.” It’s a clever tactic, making you warm to him, and by extension, his company, as he speaks of a genuine desire to build communities that people aspire to be part of, rather than just building to make big profits. It’s an attitude that might help privately-owned Amdec survive the destruction currently wrecking the construction industry. Group Five entered business rescue in March after a loss of R1,31-billion in the year to June 2018, and Murray & Roberts took the peremptory step of selling its local building divisions in 2016. The Amdec Group is funded by profits from previous projects and

optimistic about the country.” In a recent article in The Daily Maverick , former Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille accused conservative members of the city caucus of mobilising rich ratepayers, environmentalists, and heritage and planning regulations to prevent the development of public spaces for public good. Instead, they have left Clifton, the city centre, Woodstock, Salt River, Hout Bay, Rondebosch and Plumstead “still fundamentally constructed on apartheid lines.” Yet Amdec’s new R1,5-billion Yacht Club with apartments costing upwards of R2,8-million seems to widen the social divide, even though Wilson cites improving the lives of poorer people as one of his goals. It’s an interesting debate, he says, because a company needs deep financial resources to be able to contribute to impoverished communities. “It’s very difficult to deliver low-cost housing if you don’t have a balance sheet to be able to do it. You need to allow businesses to thrive in their core discipline, and you need to create public-private partnerships where you can encourage successful businesses like our own to participate in social upliftment programmes,” he says. “We support the spatial planning notion that people of all racial communities and all wealth backgrounds should be able to live together, but you need to be a little bit more pragmatic that you are not going to be able to develop something in the V&A Waterfront that’s affordable to communities with limited wealth. But it could be in Salt River or Woodstock or parts of Cape Town CBD, where there are pieces of land which are less desirable for upmarket housing but are perfectly acceptable for more economically aspirant purchasers or tenants.” The Amdec Group has a division that focuses on inclusionary

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD JULY 2019