KNYSNA NEWS - Instead of the usual stream of vehicles negotiating for space in the parking lot, the management of Knysna's landmark Food Lover's Market was met with an unusual development taking place on their doorstep on Tuesday morning this week.
The normally filled-to-the-brim parking bays on the western side were seemingly accommodating a group of workers who appeared to be erecting a palisade fence right through the middle of the parking lot.
The new feature, it soon came to light, was the handiwork of Sanral (SA National Roads Agency) who owns a section of the land constituting the parking lot and who had decided to claim it there and then.
The bulk of the property on which the store stands is owned by a company called Deep Blue See Properties co-owned by Andries Fourie and George Efstratiou. There is however an adjacent portion of land which accommodates a section of the parking lot at Food Lover's as well as the lawn running alongside it, which is a road reserve belonging to Sanral.
The sliver of crucially positioned land has been the subject of lengthy negotiations between Sanral and Deep Blue See which recently resulted in Sanral approaching Fourie and Efstratiou with an ultimatum: purchase or rent the land from us, or we will erect a fence demarcating our sector of the property. A series of independent valuations followed but differed so vastly that another stalemate set in. "We weren't prepared to pay Sanral's proposed value," Fourie told Knysna-Plett Herald this week.
It is in the wake of this that Sanral decided to act on its alert by cordoning off its section of the property – much to the dismay of everyone on the receiving end. "Since the property owner refused to acquire or rent the property, the decision was then taken to fence off Sanral-owned property," explained Sanral Western Region manager Randall Cable.
Sanral had warned the Deep Blue See partners about what it would do but had not furnished them with a date, they say, and according to Efstratiou, they were quite shocked when they got the call. Once at the site, Fourie however managed to smooth things over by negotiating fresh terms with Sanral whose contractors promptly dismantled the fencing and vacated the premises. Just as suddenly as it went up, the temporary Berlin Wall went down leaving sundry onlookers scratching their hindheads, and with Sanral and Deep Blue See – for the time being, at least – having kissed and made up and the latter seemingly quite happy to foot the bill for the temporary erection if negotiations go the way they expect them to.
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