Cape Town data centre developers say objectors misunderstand the hustle
Daily Maverick · Lindsey Schutters ·
Unpacking the rebuttal for the appeal to the Cape Town Municipal Planning Tribunal approval for the Equinix data centres near the airport raises more questions than answers.
Getting one thing straight about the data centres planned for opposite Cape Town International Airport is that the developer on record, which is handling all the wheeling and dealing and issued the formal response to the appeal, is a crowd called Planning Partners.
They’re acting on behalf of King Air Industria (KAI, which is co-developed by Atterbury) and Equinix. According to the 91-page response that could be obtained only via a Paia request, which Daily Maverick has now studied, Equinix’s involvement in the KAI project centres on a long-term commercial lease and infrastructure funding arrangement.
Crucially, Equinix’s legal counsel (Baker & McKenzie) advised the company not to proceed with multi-hundred-million-rand investments unless the City of Cape Town provided explicit statutory certainty that data centres are legally permitted under municipal zoning rules. This legal warning directly prompted the City to amend its Municipal Planning By-law to explicitly include “data centre” under the definition of a warehouse.
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