Speaker: Andrew Boraine, CE Cape Town Partnership

Boraine began by thanking the speakers and stressing to participants that the Forum welcomed their feedback and suggestions for future meetings.

Suggestions for future Forums had already been tabled, and included:

• The Green Goal Initiative and Sustainability
• Beautification of the Central City
• The Green Point Urban Park
• The Fan Park at the Grand Parade
• Informal trading
• Social development
• Activities around the Final Draw (4 December at the CTICC)
• Marketing
• Retail
• Confederations Cup (14-16 June 2009)
• The Central City pedestrian experience.

Reminding the audience that ‘everything we do is part of the build-up to 2010’, he provided a list of some of the forthcoming events, including:

• The stadium roof raising, which would be visible to the public from around mid-February onwards. The process would involve 36 000m2 of hanging glass incorporating 3 500 tons of steel and 1 000 tons of glass, being winched up over a three week period;
• The Spier Infecting the City Festival: 21-28 February in the Central City
• Retail Therapy – a massive Central City sale – 23-28 February;
• Creative Clusters @ the Design Indaba: 27 Feb – 1 March (CTICC);
• The first of many proposed ‘Fan Walk’ walking tours, to be organized by Cape Town Partnership and to take place from the Cape Town Station to the Stadium on 18 March.
• Cape Argus Pick ‘n Pay Cycle Tour: 8 March
• Absa Cape Epic: 21-28 March
• Community Jazz Concert on Greenmarket Square: 1 April
• International Jazz Festival: 3-4 April (CTICC)

In conclusion, Boraine reinforced that: “the purpose of the Forum was to follow up. This is not a once off. The presentations that you will see today – where they have been cleared and authorized, will be up on our website to download. We will be producing a general report on this meeting as well as a press release which will be available on the website.” However, he urged participants who had not yet registered as members to do so without delay: “We had 373 replies for this meeting, but only 51 people of those have so far registered. We were in a situation today, because of the overwhelming turnout, that we had to turn away some people who have registered as members of the Forum. From now on we will give preference to registered members. And only then will we open it up to limited numbers of other guests. The other advantage of registering as a member is that we will be writing more detailed transcriptions of some of the topics discussed here and only registered members will be able to get access to those reports, which will include contact names and addresses.”

Related posts:

1. 2010 Central City Partners Forum II
2. 2010 Central City Partners Forum I: All roads lead to the Central City
3. Reportback on the Seventh 2010 Central City Partners Forum (31 March 2010)
4. 2010 Central City Partners Forum III: Visualising the Experience
5. Central City Partners Forum