When an IOL journalist and photographer were taken inside Sea Point's Ritz last year, there was no electricity, no working lift, and broken stairs and windows. Almost every floor carried a warning that it was condemned. Nelson Mandela stayed here after his release from Victor Verster Prison in 1990. Now its new owner wants to bring it back, and the City of Cape Town has opened the plans to public comment.
How a Sea Point landmark ended up condemned
The Ritz opened on 23 September 1972, with a steel restaurant on its roof that went all the way round once an hour. The Top of the Ritz became a destination for its views over the Atlantic Seaboard.
It closed in March 2015, and the rescue that followed did not last. In 2016 restaurateur Nicky van der Walt arrived to relaunch it, and his company started a R120 million refurbishment in late 2017. After a soft launch in 2018 the relaunch fizzled, and by the middle of that year the building was shut again. It ended in court, with a judge ordering Van der Walt out after things soured with the owners.
The owners were the Hurwitz and Roffey families, and Barney Hurwitz, who owned the hotel before his death in 2017, had insisted it deserved "a brand, not just some fly-by-night operation". What came next was worse. Around Covid, hijackers moved into the empty building, and it took the families' lawyers years to get it back. They finally got the hijackers out legally by having the building condemned as unfit for humans.
What OKU wants, and what the City has to decide first
OKU Hotels, the luxury group behind OKU Ibiza and OKU Kos, bought it through OKU Cape Town in 2025, after a long negotiation with the families. Registration records put the price at R368 million, well above the figures that had been rumoured.
Its plans keep the tower and change what is inside it. Hotel suites would take floors nine to 22, floors four to eight would become apartments, and the restaurant spaces at the very top would stay. The plans also include 44 apartments, a bigger pool and a spa at ground level, and a new facade to meet structural and fire-safety requirements.
The tower itself is the harder part. A hotel is not a use the current zoning allows outright, and the 75m tower is taller than it permits. The City searched its archives for the original approval of the hotel's use and height and, according to the application, found no record. The applicant says it is reasonable to presume a tower that size was approved at the time, and asks for a 75m departure from the 60m limit under the proposed new zoning.
The Ritz is old enough for national heritage law to apply. The City's own heritage audit, the application says, graded it "Not Conservation Worthy".
None of this is approved yet. The City still has to assess the plans and the public's comments, and objections or conditions could still change them. Anyone who wants a say has until 2 November.
