Development Profile
The location of the project is best suited for a mixed use development and what is offering is exactly what the region and the province requires. This development is also a few minutes drive to the new international airport. The development is easily accessible via the network of National, Provincial and local municipal roads.
History
Umhlanga Rocks already enjoyed a high profile as a prestigious leisure address but the scarcity of available land in this node between the beach and coastal highway meant that it could not grow beyond a resort town. In creating an address for the wider area, and at the same time making a meaningful contribution in implementing the Northern Corridor Concept , THD (under the Moreland Developments banner) developed the Mount Edgecombe golf estate as one of the first in the country and the La Lucia Ridge Office Estate followed soon after.
The Gateway Theatre of Shopping
As design of the Gateway shopping centre proceeded, designers, in an effort to forge greater integration between the town centre and the shopping centre, rather than have it as a stand-alone entity within it, established an urban structure consistent with the pedestrian grain of movement in the shopping centre. Palm Boulevard was the key piece of this and was designated as being the focus around which the early qualities of the town centre would grow.
The Development Ethic
As a New Urbanism project, the focus of design in the Umhlanga Ridge Town Centre has been on a public environment that is accessible to all, is safe and convenient for pedestrians, manners the private car into a subservient role, is well landscaped, lit, managed and maintained and defines the complexity of a vibrant, mixed-use node with a legibility and place-making that gives the area a distinctive identity.
An extensive and heavily used bus and taxi system is already in place and a shuttle system for the local region is now in planning.
The architecture undertaken by individual developers and their respective teams is in terms of a development manual and a design review process, again under the direction of the Management Association. The manual encourages an eclectic, contemporary approach and is not stylistic nor historicist. The emphasis is on an architecture that is responsive to the public environment and engages with the life of the street at sidewalk level.
