West Prop hires South African golf course guru to upgrade new Harare initiative

By Staff Reporter

Property mogul Ken Sharpe has hired a globally acclaimed golf course designer Peter Matkovich to come to Harare and upgrade Warren Hills Golf Course into a world class sporting facility as he moved to outline an awe-inspiring portfolio of projects lined up for the year by his West Properties Zimbabwe.

Sharpe has interest in, Sunshine Developments, a joint venture with the Harare City Council.

Sunshine Developments recently won a High Court bid to evict sitting tenants, Warren Hills Gold Club from the Harare North facility.

The court case is set to pave way for the Hills Golf Estate and branded luxury residential and hotel development on the land.

In a statement during the week, Sharpe said they were now awaiting authorities at Town House to accede to the recommendation to allow the development to proceed.

In the planned project, Sharpe is eying the services of Matkovich to upgrade the gold course.

Matkovich is an increasingly prolific South African course designer, who started in the game as a professional on the European and South African tours before jumping fully into design during the 1990s.

His portfolio is now littered with high-profile creations such as Arabella, De Zalze, Pinnacle Point (with Darren Clarke) and Prince’s Grant.

Sharpe said the “project upgrade for the new design will take 22 months to complete the brand new PGA Championship standard golf course that will have some exciting new features. A first for Zimbabwe.”

READ FULL STATEMENT BELOW:

PRESS STATEMENT BY WEST PROP CEO MR KENNETH SHARPE ON EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS COMING THIS YEAR

I am very excited to share with you today the several BIG announcements happening at West Property Zimbabwe over the next few weeks, and in particular three big milestones mentioned below.

The first is the Hills Golf Estate and branded luxury residential and hotel development at Warren Hills. We managed last week to successfully achieve the eviction of the previous tenant under court case HC 6212/20 and court order number HH 0414385. We now await City of Harare to accede to the recommendation to allow the development to proceed.

This paves way for our team from South Africa led by globally respected golf course designer Peter Matkovich to come to Harare in the next quarter and commence work on site. The project upgrade for the new design will take 22 months to complete the brand new PGA Championship standard golf course that will have some exciting new features. A first for Zimbabwe.

The infrastructure and servicing will commence within the next six months and run in conjunction with the golf course upgrade. This is a US$280 million project which in our view is a big confidence affirmation on Zimbabwe as an investment destination. This would be the first premium branded luxury residences attached to a five-star hotel in sub-Saharan Africa.

These developments are part of our vision and mission at West Property Zimbabwe to bring world class ‘Dubai type’ lifestyle communities to Zimbabwe where both residents and visitors can live, work, shop and play in a safe and secure gated development. For the play element, we intend not just limiting our offering to the golf players but also to bring a top-notch world-class swimming and tennis academies, as well as sports training and recreational facilities at a level not seen before in the country.

The development will be a ‘must visit’ destination for locals, tourists and international players. We have also included in the development plan a section for retirement and elderly care for the older population to enjoy the outdoors in a safe and green environment. We are certain that the total open areas and green spaces is at 80 percent which must be a record locally and internationally.

Secondly on the cards for finalizing in 2023 is the two massive projects being the Mall of Zimbabwe and Pomona City phase 2 which we have made significant developments on in the last few months and accordingly we will be making announcements soon.

Thirdly, we at West Property Zimbabwe have been busy working over the past months on a new initiative at our company that will enable the public to benefit from our continued success. Many have seen the speed at which we have created Millennium Heights Estate, a development of 1000 apartments where we have opened Block 1&2. We have already sold out 85 percent on block 3 and commencing sales for block 4 next month. We have achieved compliance for phase 1A Pomona City allowing stand owners to commence construction of their homes.

The servicing of phase B&C is progressing according to schedule with stands almost 70 percent sold out. Our success is your success and as such we believe in empowering individuals to grow in our organization of a high performance winning culture. We remain focused on our corporate strategy of putting “1 billion bricks in the ground by 2050”. It is with this in mind that we will make an announcement for a very special investment offering on a limited time basis during the first week of March this year.