Report by Richard Arderne
We celebrated our sales for the financial year just ended, with our “AGM” at the wonderful Dune Ridge Lodge on Tuesday. We took the opportunity to reflect on our town, and brainstormed the positives and negatives. The positives outnumbered the negatives by a large margin!
The POSITIVES, In no particular order:
- Wonderful river, canals and sea
- Supportive community
- Young families moving into town, school full
- Good quality of life … and good quality sea water & air
- Relatively good municipality, energetic new councilor
- Sporting mecca, many sports clubs
- Nature areas around town
- Strong civil society (eg Prop Owners, Kromme Trust)
- Good retail & hospitality facilities
- Nice size. Plett is too big, Oyster Bay is too small
- Low crime rate, safe
- Peaceful quiet town
- Good doctors & alternative healing (yoga etc etc)
- Port and fishing industry
- Opportunities for new businesses
- Strong property demand, and prices way lower than Plett
NEGATIVES:
- Beach erosion … but solid plan in place
- Infrastructure lags population growth .. but sewerage works upgraded, roads re-surfaced
- Drought .. but PE should get Orange River water soon, might take pressure off “our” dams
- No fully fledged retirement village … but two are planned
- Medical facilities not sufficient for all, but JBay hospital underway
- Insufficient diversification of businesses … leads to opportunities
- Growing informal housing
- Threat of nuclear power plant… but seems to be shelved, and surely we can’t afford it anyway
- Threat of floods and fires … but now new Sand River Bridge, and “Thatch Farm” drain, and fire station
- Shortage of saleable property stock!
In summary, we are very positive about our town!
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