Listed private school company, Curro Holdings, has opened a new school at Century City which is expected to further increase demand for residential and commercial property in the burgeoning precinct.
Curro School
Executive Head Sean Friedenthal says enrolments at the school for the first year at just under 300 were much higher than they had initially been anticipated. With classes of around 25 pupils, the school currently caters for grade RR through to Grade 5 but will extend to Grades 6 & 7 next year.
With 55 classrooms of which only 33 are currently being utilised, it has been built to accommodate around 800 learners and Friedenthal is confident they will be at full capacity within a few years. A high school is also in the planning stages.
Curro Century City, which is the group’s fifth school in the Western Cape, is its first new concept “City school”, having a bigger academic focus than the traditional larger Curro traditional campuses and offering a range of activities from chess and art to music and drama as well as various sports codes.
Greg Deans, a director or Rabie Property Group, said Century City had outperformed the market in recent years reporting strong residential and commercial sales. “Our current residential developments Quayside and Quaynorth look set to be sold out before construction has been completed which we have not seen since 2006/2007. Now that the school has opened we are holding our breath expecting to see a further positive impact on our next development Ashton Park and future developments, both residential and commercial.”
Deans said Curro Century City provided a much needed facility in a mixed use development for not only those living in the precinct but also for those working there.
“This is reflected in the enrolment with learners coming from all over the Peninsula, many are the children of people working within Century City and wishing to be close to their children.”
He said the school was going to be extremely accessible to neighbouring areas and the West Coast suburbs once the new MyCiti Bus Service was extended to the precinct by mid-2013.
“A school completes a suburb and it will create generations of people who will say ‘I went to school in Century City’. It becomes a tremendous community binder, a major nerve centre for generations of people and there is no doubt will add further life and soul to Century City.” He said thanks to Century City’s urban designing it was possible to walk to the school from all residential developments in the precinct, bar one, without having to cross a road. The road system to the school has been designed to facilitate easy flow of traffic with two access and egress points.
Leave a Comment