DETAILED PLANNING has gone into the design of South Africa's first Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) at Coega outside Port Elizabeth. This is according to technical and planning executive manager of the Coega Development Corporation (CDC), Eugene Heeger. He says that the planning of the zone has been based around the "seven-minute principle". "We have designed the zone so that the people work in clusters where they are able to walk within seven minutes to the perimeter of that cluster," says Heeger. "All basic services and many commercial extras will be within the cluster, such as shops and restaurants - in addition to the normal industrial developments." The Coega Development Corporation is committed to making the zone a healthy and pleasant place to work, invest and do business. A priority for the planning committee is the aesthetics of the IDZ. "The environmental controls are well beyond what a municipality would require. "This will not be an ad-hoc development. At every stage of the planning, we consider what the zone is going to look like in 50 years time to make sure that the space we allocate today is large enough for growth. "When an investor comes in we are able to present them with a complete picture with regard to areas such as service connections, for example." Heeger also points out that landscaping is going to be an important element in addition to huge structural elements such as entry features. A total of R800-million has been budgeted to provide infrastructure in the first phase of the Coega IDZ, which will cover half of the 12 000 hectares which the zone encompasses. This includes the construction of a R4.5-million water reservoir and the building of a temporary haul road to transport rock from the Coega Kop quarry to the port of Ngqura. "A spine road project that will also be started this year will be built parallel to the haul road but will be a permanent, six-lane road with one lane solely for trucks." Heeger says that the Coega Development Corporation also has "some other exciting building projects that are at an architectural design stage. "This includes a recruitment centre for the thousands of people we have to put into a database so that contractors can draw from that pool as part of the whole labour management strategy. "We are planning an office park just off the interchange, where we see the core functions of the IDZ operator and other government departments housed."