Letter: Where has all the beauty gone?

THE area surrounding the Hill Presbyterian Church and Alfred Terrace in Central was once a prime tourist visiting stop. With the interesting and colourful houses, many brides captured their special moments in front of these old ladies built around 1869.

But now these houses are crying out for a bit of a makeover and looking shabby and neglected.

For a change of scenery, I ventured into the lane behind these houses with my wedding couple – what a sight: human faeces, used condoms, open drains with flies swarming around the dirt, all of which urged me to take the couple elsewhere. The poor bride stepped into one of the open manholes and injured her foot quite badly.

I noticed that the vagrants have made their “lounge” opposite the beautiful old church, with arm chairs and mattresses in the fenced-off area where the creche belonging to the church sends their kids to play. Again, rubbish and blankets were just blowing around like decorations.

I spoke to some of the people living in the area. They are at their wits’ end, because the municipality refuses to close the lane up like so many on the other side of Richmond Hill. One of the owners has experienced seven burglaries, with robbers climbing over the walls and using the lane as a quick getaway alley. Prostitutes also have a roaring trade where they can’t be seen in this lane.

One street down they are developing the new Donkin Village, which is looking superb. But would people really be interested to rent office space here with these pockets of danger and decay just a block up from them? To me it sounds like a waste of money to renovate and build coffee shops here if this is the situation of the area.

The NMB Development Agency turned the Donkin into something modern but they simply can’t maintain the area to make it stay in the shape they hoped for. Weeds have overgrown the supposedly natural vegetation area. Like so many projects of this agency, they have wonderful and sometimes idealistic ideas which are left to decay after a while.

I want to encourage the municipality, owners and the DA council under Morne Steyn to put an effort into restoring this beautiful, historically important heritage area. If not, all the renovation is just in vain.