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Cape Town to fight for stadium
03/04/2007 18:48 - (SA)
Cape Town - The city of Cape Town says it will fight a bid to block the proposed Green Point stadium and is going ahead with construction.
The city's 2010 spokesperson Pieter Cronje confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that its had been served with papers by a civic group seeking to halt the R2.9bn project.
"Our legal team is busy going through them: it's two lever-arch files full of documents," he said.
"Our position is that we will defend it [the application] and work on site is continuing according to programme."
He said the city believed the statutory processes it had followed in approving the stadium were correct.
"The development is not ad hoc, but in tune with developments in the Waterfront, Somerset hospital and the surrounding central business district," he said.
Asked about the effect of any delay in construction, he said time had always been tight, and the project was chasing a October 2009 deadline for handover to Fifa.
"We can't afford any undue delays," he said.
150-page founding affidavit
Earlier on Tuesday, the Cape Town Environmental Protection Association said its lawyers had filed an urgent application for an interdict in the Cape High Court.
Association spokesperson Kendal Jarvis said the application included a 150-page founding affidavit.
He did not know when the matter would be heard.
The association is asking the court to set aside a series of decisions by city and provincial authorities, claiming they "rode roughshod" over the principles of public participation in order to satisfy an arbitrary Fifa deadline.
Other respondents in the application include Fifa and its Local Organising Committee (LOC) and Western Cape Environment MEC Tasneem Essop.
LOC chief executive Danny Jordan said the LOC received an e-mail on the matter just before 13:00.
"As of yet the papers have not been lodged but we understand that they are being drafted. We will only be able to respond after the papers have been served."
Construction of the stadium was earlier opposed by another civic group, the Green Point Common Association.
However it eventually reached a compromise agreement with the city.
- SAPA
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