Legal battle over Grahamstown mall ends

legal battle over grahamstown mall ends


the legal battle over the development of a new supermarket in grahamstown is over after developer rob beer – who planned to build a superspar right next door to the city’s only pick n pay – yesterday agreed to halt the development.

beer, who has invested over r11million in the development, has been stonewalled by a series of court applications brought by pick n pay franchise owner mark shelton to stop the development. shelton’s pick n pay is a tenant in one of beer’s developments, the peppergrove mall.

beer had planned to develop a new mall immediately adjacent to peppergrove, with superspar as its anchor tenant.

but shelton claimed this went contrary to a “tacit” agreement between the two men, in terms of which neither would prejudice the “success and growth” of each other’s business enterprises.

beer has denied the existence of any such tacit agreement.

shelton also claimed the new development would cause traffic congestion in adjoining allen street.

shelton’s most recent move to stop the development was to ask the high court to review the makana municipality’s approval of beer’s building plans.

before the matter could be heard in court, the municipality agreed to withdraw its approval of the building plans as well as its approval of the subdivision and consolidation of several residential erven into one erf on which the development was to have been built.

and in a final blow to beer’s plans, it withdrew its special consent permitting the building of a supermarket on the site.

in a deed of settlement, beer has now agreed that, as long as shelton is a tenant of peppergrove mall, he will not build a supermarket anywhere within the vicinity.

he plans to now build a smaller mall with shops such as mr price on the adjacent site.

beer says he has suffered millions of rands in damages.

he says there are many “unanswered questions”, particularly with regard to certain internal municipal processes and the manner in which shelton had accessed certain traffic and other controversial reports.

“i am certainly considering (legal) action against the municipality and have also asked the municipality to conduct an internal inquiry,” he said.

“and i am not the only loser here. i have 70 employees whose jobs are now on the line ....”

he understood the spar group was considering taking the matter up with the competition board.