Commercial Property Demolition

I failed to convince a friend we should acquire a piece of land that had possibilities. It was a short car drive, about 15 minutes away from a large residential area that had to expand but could not, because there was no available land.

She declined to come on board because of her motto. She only buys rental property because of the monthly cash flow and its tax benefits. Dead right, no doubt about that, but I still believe that everything starts and ends with land. Land can be vacant for a long time, but somebody will want it one day. Flawed investment thinking you say? It might be, but my conviction was resuscitated today. 

I thought I was in the wrong street. I wasn’t. I got disoriented because the blues hotel had vanished, reduced to rubble. They demolished it. I called it the blues hotel, because of the sign outside advertising it as a premium blues club. Television came along, and blues singers did not have to cross the border into Canada to perform anymore. It later became a boarding house, daily rates only. The clientele came, drank, fought, slept and left. Some parked grocery carts they use as luggage outside, and collected them in the morning to go out and hustle again.

Then it closed some five months ago. That affected the convenience store a few feet away. It also closed down. I took some pics of the rubble and wondered which property developer had bought that dilapidated old blues hotel, and the structure that will replace it, after clearing the rubble. It’s land. I doesn’t go bad like meat during a power failure.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger