Ponte just after completion

IT'S been described by some as something out of Star Wars with itsunusual inner perspectives; by others as the Tower of Babel. It's thetallest residential building in the city with a huge flashing Vodacomadvertisement on its roof. It's probably one of the most striking urbanlandmarks in southern Africa.

It's the cylindrical Ponte City, of course, standing tall onthe edge of Hillbrow's flatlands, at 54 storeys. Completed in 1975 at acost of R11-million, it was in its heyday one of the city's mostsought-after addresses, described by newspapers at the time as "heavenon earth".

Ponte has six penthouse apartments and five of them are vacant. Eachpenthouse comes with a sauna, bar and rooftop braai area, spread overthree levels. It has classic 70s features like dark brown carpetsrunning up the walls, linoleum floor tiles in the kitchen and thosegarish, brightly-patterned bathroom tiles that were all the rage at thetime. If that's not to your taste, the view surely will be. It mustrate as the most spectacular city view south of the Sahara.

At night that view is breathtaking - a twinkling panorama, with the50-storey Carlton Centre and the nearby 90-storey Hillbrow Towersoaring into the heavens. (Ponte was originally meant to be 64 storeys,but the city council wouldn't allow it.)

Early construction of Ponte

Building manager Danie Celliers says he's "not going to give thepenthouses to just anyone. Tenants would have to be responsible andlook after them properly", and pay a modest R3 900 per month.

Ponte's fortunes have been very much tied to its surroundings.When it was completed, Hillbrow was a popular cosmopolitan area, withpavement cafes, coffee shops, record bars and nightclubs servicingresidents living in the mostly large, spacious flats that make up thedense flatlands of the suburb.

But those residents starting moving out of Hillbrow in the 80s,along with businesses from the city centre, in an exodus to thesuburbs. At the same time, towards the mid-80s, the Group Areas Act wasabolished; and immigrants from west Africa started moving intoHillbrow. The demographics of the area changed, Ponte become anovercrowded, untidy block, and lost its desirable status.

The architect, Rodney Grosskopff, says Ponte was originallybuilt as low-cost housing but it was much admired as a tall, uniquebuilding, at a time when skyscrapers were reaching for the clouds allover town. Each of its 470 flats were furnished (another factor makingit desirable for immigrants), and it had a self-contained shoppingcentre with over 50 shops.

Hollow cylinder
Ponte is a huge hollowcylinder, with the rock it was built on still visible at the base ofthe cylinder, if you have the courage to stick your head out one of theupper floor windows to look down. In fact, it's hard to focus on thebottom from the top without the roundness and depth tugging at you,almost pulling you down.

Grosskopff says of the rock: "I liked having mother earth evident at the bottom."

The building is finished with a rough, grey concrete look, called "hacked concrete", a style referred to as "New Brutalism".

Grosskopff says the construction of Ponte posed problems. Therewas a fault in the ground rock on which it was built. This was pluggedwith concrete and reinforced with steel girders, one of which slipped,killing one of the construction workers.

"It's the sheer magnitude of the project," says Grosskopff,"it's actually two buildings, one on top of the other." The top 23floors are separately supplied with water from another set of tanks,housed on the 31st floor.

Each floor took two weeks to complete, and the building took around two years to construct.

The wind was another problem. It whistles up the building,colliding with the wind coming down, causing great gusts of wind aroundthe bottom of the building. As a result the windows had to have specialseals, and only sliding windows were used, opening from about 1.5mabove floor level.

The open inner core was necessary to ensure that every room had access to natural light, a ruling at the time.

Ponte in the 90s
Ponte went through a periodin the 90s when it attracted criminal tenants, who most people believedwere Nigerian druglords, in keeping with the general deterioration ofconditions in Hillbrow. The streets of the suburb still show signs ofthat degeneration: they're blowing with garbage, the pavements aredotted with hawkers and their wares, and unemployed people gather ingroups on street corners.

Perhaps Ponte hit its lowest point when in 1998 it was suggestedby the ANC Youth League that it be turned into a prison, an idea soondiscarded.

Ponte had armed guards in this period, giving it a forbiddinglook. When property management company Trafalgar Property and FinancialServices took over four years ago the first thing they did was disarmthe guards, and install a new security system.

Stigma
In the past year the building has seena drastic turnaround in its fortunes. Building manager Celliers saysPonte's biggest problem has been the stigma attached to it. And that'sa stigma that's held by many Joburgers, even today.

But Celliers says the new security system has been finely tuned -residents each receive an access control disc, and when they leave,those discs are cancelled. "You simply can't get into the flats withoutthe disc," he says. The system also helps control the number of peopleliving in each flat. He can monitor from his desk who is coming andgoing, each entry being reflected on his computer screen.

A year ago this system helped catch a thief, who was enteringthe building legitimately with a disc, but stealing from flats. Hisdisc identified him and he was arrested. The system has also chasedaway the criminal element, and now the flats are mostly occupied bystudents and families.

Occupancy
Celliers says there are five agentsactively working to push the present 70 percent occupancy higher."There are daily ads in the paper, and they have a table and chairs atPark Station, soliciting business."

Neville Schaefer, CEO of Trafalgar Property and Financial Services,says he doesn't think occupancy will ever get to 100 percent. "We bankon an 8-10 percent vacancy." In the building's history, it's never been100 percent occupied.

Some R6-million has been spent in the past four years toupgrade the building. Ponte has a single owner, a family living in EastLondon. Schaefer says a recent survey established that tenants wantedthe simple things to be fixed before they felt comfortable with theiraccommodation: cleanliness and ongoing maintenance.

There are 10 different size flats, with flats from the 41st floorupwards classified as "luxury flats", meaning they're slightly bigger,with better carpeting. Bachelor flats go for R850 a month, whileone-bedroomed flats come in at R1 200 a month. Tenants sign a "flatcondition form" before taking up residence, and if they default on rentpayments, they are immediately removed.

And before moving in, Celliers has the flat painted, carpets cleaned,and the electrics fixed. He is busy replacing stoves in many of theflats, and gradually removing the last of the furniture that wasoriginally put into each flat.

He says too that the area is a lot better, largely due to anincreased police presence in Hillbrow. In the past year since he hastaken over, there has not been a single problem in the building.Previously, broken fire extinguishers and windows were a regularfeature.

Three storeys of garbage
A huge problem wasthe three storeys of garbage filling the base of the cylinder,accumulated since the first tenants moved in. That's now clear withjust odd pieces of paper caught on window sills down the length of thebuilding. Although, says Celliers, people still can't resist throwingrubbish out the windows. There's a dedicated person employed to spendhis day picking up that garbage.

The building is patrolled by 24-hour security officers, and now hasonly three entrances open, one conveniently placed on one of the lowerlevels for Wits Technikon students, who come out across the road fromthe technikon.

Shopping level
Its eight lifts are all working these days (none were working a yearago, says Celliers), courtesy of a new maintenance company. And in thecommercial area on the eighth floor, there's an active gym operating, avery busy laundry, a restaurant, a cellphone shop, an internet café,and a tuckshop. A supermarket is to open shortly, and a church has justtaken a lease on the community hall.

Architect Grosskopff describes this commercial level as "a bigdisappointment". He wanted to create a village shopping area, withsmall, cosy shops and a terrace. But instead small flea market-typekiosks were created, in an effort to collect more rent. One of theshops, Mary's Last Stand, used to sell fresh game, poultry, fish andvegetables, straight from a farm in Honeydew. But even it didn'tsurvive long - within several months most of them had closed for lackof support. The problem persists: nowadays some of them are againempty.

In the grounds is a medium-sized swimming pool, and twobasketball courts (converted from a tennis court). There's seven levelsof parking for tenants, although at the moment only two are being used.

The building is occasionally used by film companies as asetting for a shoot. Celliers says he's very selective about who heallows to use it for this purpose. He asks for a synopsis of the filmand is very wary of how the building is portrayed, and if negative,will turn down the request.

Suicides
Over the years suicides have takenplace from Ponte, although no record of the exact number has been kept.Grosskopff says that soon after it was built, several suicidesoccurred. There have been two since 2000, the last one occurring 18months ago. The tall windows were designed to make jumping out moredifficult, he says. The windows around the inner core were all barred,and most still are.

When asked if he could build another Ponte, Grosskopff says itcouldn't be done, but "if you could uproot Ponte and put it in Sandton,it would be most desirable once again".

Grosskopff still has an affinity with the building. "The shapeof the building on the skyline is still quite thrilling," he says. Headds that he likes what photographers have explored with the angles andshapes that the building conjures up. "It's very exciting."