A mansion at Riverside Estate in Nairobi. Residents say allowing highrise buildings in high-end suburbs will reduce the value of their property.
City Hall has come under intense pressure from resident associations that have moved to court to block the local authority’s plans to rezone posh suburbs and allow the development of highrise properties.
Homeowners in Riverside Drive and Spring Valley estates are some of the groups that have moved to court to challenge City Council of Nairobi’s decision to approve highrise apartments in their neighbourhoods.
In their application to the courts, the groups argued that a review of building restrictions would lead to depreciation of their properties, which are mostly single-family dwellings.
“We wish to maintain that if the development is allowed to continue as intended, it would negatively impact on the value of our property,” read a letter to City Hall objecting to the development of a seven-storey apartment backed by Huts and Homes Limited, around Riverside Drive.
Ashu Sharma, a resident of Riverside Drive says the development breaches his constitutional rights and will significantly dent the value of his town house, currently valued at about Sh30 million.
“I bought the home 15 years ago with the knowledge that the zoning restrictions would control the development,” said Mr Sharma who terms the project a breach of the existing building guidelines.
“I would be lucky to get Sh20 million for my house if this development is completed as planned,” he added.
In the other suit, the Lakeview Estate residents’ association within the Spring Valley area has also moved to court demanding that City Hall withdraws its approval granted to the Suraya Property Group for building of a hotel and four office blocks.
They too, through their advocate Ben Omanyi, are arguing that the authority erred in granting the building approval for the Sh850 million-worth project as it would depress the value of the adjacent property and rob the owners off their privacy.
While the council is yet to publish the intended rezoning guidelines seeking to allow the development of highrise apartments, homeowners in the upmarket estates are battling to pre-empt infiltration by multi-storeyed residential blocks in previously exclusive neighbourhoods.
Patrick Odongo, the director of planning at City Hall, said that the planned review of zones was intended to allow for denser settlement in the upmarket estates to reflect the realities of a growing urban settlement.
“The increased population in the city needs to be embraced by all residents,” Mr Odongo told the Business Daily recently.
“Taller residential buildings are the reality across all major cities worldwide.”
Mr Odongo added that easing development restrictions should bring down land prices and encourage new investments in the real estate sector, since the cost of land was the single largest factor driving home prices.
“City Hall is working on raising the plot ratio restriction to 200 per cent from the current 75 per cent in these estates to encourage investments that have been stifled by high cost of land,” the director of planning told investors when he first announced on the intended rezoning.
Plot ratio is a measure that compares the total built floor space with the size of the land on which the property sits.
Authorities use the measure to determine developments in different zones.
A 75 per cent plot ratios means that the total built up area on a 1,000 square feet piece of land is limited to 750 square feet, which could either be distributed in several floors or in one level.
Under the current zoning guidelines, developments in residential suburbs classified as Zone 4 including Kileleshwa, Riverside Drive and Spring Valley, developers are allowed to develop a maximum of four floors.
But the City Hall wants to double the number of floors allowed in these suburbs, a situation likely to be bitterly contested by existing homes and result in a myriad court actions, if the two cases are anything to go by.
The Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations, has in the past said that it would also seek to block the council from rezoning the exclusive suburbs to allow for the development of apartment before its expands the existing infrastructure, including roads, water, and sewerage.
