With a R10m budget, it must be one of the smallest development agencies in the world. But that hasn’t stopped the Eastern Cape’s Blue Crane development agency from embracing ambitious projects.

It is already touted as a model for the many development agencies being financed by the Industrial Development Corp (IDC).

Run by locals, the agency plans — Dubai-like — to make the Blue Crane municipality, encompassing Somerset East, Cookhouse and Pearston in the Eastern Cape, a hub for tourism, industry and leisure.

Also, like Dubai, it is upgrading its airfield to take jet planes and function as the centre of the hub.

Dubai’s airport serves a region of 2,5bn people and 165 destinations. The Blue Crane agency is hardly less ambitious, though its municipality’s population is only 35500. It wants the airport to become the main arrival point for international tourists visiting the many attractions in the region, including game and nature reserves, guest farms and houses, hunting and fly fishing.

The Addo Elephant Park is opening a northern gate to Somerset East to coincide with the upgrade. The airport budget of R5m includes a light industrial park that has already persuaded an aircraft manufacturer (but, appropriately, a manufacturer of microlights) to relocate from Pretoria.

Cookhouse, on the railway line and main highway between Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg, is to be a heavy industrial centre, and Somerset East the residential and light industrial node.

Pearston, a typical Karoo hamlet with a few houses, a bottle store and two cafés, is to be developed as a so-far unbudgeted “Karoo experience” for tourists. A new hotel, museums and other facilities will be built as a base for tourists to discover the history, geology and flora and fauna of the area.

Another R1m has been spent on Misty Mountains, a flower farm venture in which local farm workers have 65% and the agency 33%. It expects to reach a turnover of R885000 by next year.
The most ambitious project is a 400ha, R767m property development in a 2200ha nature reserve on the Boschberg Mountain that dominates the historic town on the edge of the Karoo.

The reserve is owned by the Somerset East council. Agency chief and former Somerset East mayor Zola Tesana says it is planning an eco-estate on the side of the mountain, adjoining an upgraded municipal golf course.

The eco-estate will have 420 houses, an equestrian centre, a boutique lodge and conference venue, a small hotel and a spa.

In a first for SA, the agency will take the risk of developing the estate itself instead of putting it out to the private sector. “We want the profit to go to the community,” says Tesana. “And we’re prepared to take that risk to do it. We will concession out the equestrian estate, the lodge, hotel, spa and golf course to the private sector. We expect the Blue Crane area to benefit by R335m in the four years after the estate’s completion.”

The planning of the project has coincided with — perhaps triggered — a boom in Somerset East property. The SA Property Transfer Guide, a subscription Internet site, shows sales growing from R7,5m in 2002 to R36m last year, with average prices rising from R97000 to R333000. But, according to lawyers Vosloo & Nolte, prices for the best of the town’s 19th-century houses broke through R1m this year, with the latest sale at R1,4m.

Somerset East is only 90 minutes’ drive from Port Elizabeth and its oak lined streets, museums and quaint houses are attracting artists and entrepreneurs.

The agency is one of 20 development agencies being funded by the IDC. The head of agency development and support, Stuart Bartlett, says Blue Crane is one of the smallest, “but also one of the most advanced agencies, mainly because of the enthusiasm, commitment and willingness of staff to admit they lack knowledge in many areas. It has made the best of its capacity problems.”

He adds that its enthusiasm has been infectious. “Experts from as far away as Cape Town have been inspired to assist Blue Crane, often without charge."

It has inspired other initiatives such as the Blue Crane Science Academy, in which 200 disadvantaged scholars have been enrolled.

But Blue Crane’s activities have also attracted the wary vigilance of the newly formed Somerset East Heritage Society. It worries that development will mean a “Disneyfication” of the town — and it has a point.

Dullstroom, Clarens, Hermanus, Plettenberg Bay and Knysna have all lost their hearts to development, most of it rampant and soul-destroying. The authenticity that was the main attraction for many tourists and residents has disappeared.

But Tesana and his colleagues, Chris Wilken, Rob Reach and Nico Lombard — all former farmers or businessmen in the region — say they are sensitive to maintaining the balance between development and job creation on the one hand, and preserving the unique character of the region on the other.

“But we’re still watching them closely," says one suspicious heritage society member.

The men hadn’t thought of Dubai as a model for their agency. But it could be apt. Forty years ago, Dubai was a Middle Eastern coastal hamlet of pearl fishermen and traders. Today its GDP exceeds R300bn for a local population of fewer than 500000. Blue Crane municipality’s budget this year is R46m, far smaller than the agency’s plans.

Tesana’s team is now keen to investigate Dubai more closely. But it doesn’t have enough money to fly there.