Pressure for office space in counties

Multi-storeyed buildings within Kisii town’s CBD. [ PHOTO: ERIC ABUGE / STANDARD]

For decades, many towns in counties have been majorly comprised of a few blocks acting as offices for government workers, some commercial houses and offices for non-government organisations operating in these regions.

This has meant that many town now acting as county headquarters, away from major urban centres, have been small centres, many with buildings of questionable quality and limited capacity. But with the rapid expansion of the towns, mostly driven by the devolved system of governance, which has seen increased pressure for office space, constructors are turning their attention to the estates as they look for space to put up more commercial building.

This has meant that estates surrounding the towns are being bought by construction companies, residential houses brought down and in their place modern commercial houses are coming up to provide office space for the ever increasing population.

Expansion

According to Joseph Omondi, a director with Lantern Company, a real estate company with interest in Nyanza and the Western region, the companies have been forced to expand into the estates due to poor planning by the original planners who did not provide room for expansion to the towns when they started developing them.

“The original planners of these towns probably did not envision that the towns will one day have populations of over 10,000 people. This is why they left a very small space for offices,” he says

Giving an example of Migori town, Omondi says the initial plan and the way houses were constructed within the town meant that there was just no way the town could have expanded without demolishing some of the surrounding estates and turning them to commercial areas.

He says this has seen estates like Pandi and Apida being turned from residential areas to being almost exclusively commercial areas with businessmen moving in to trade there.

And Omondi says it is not just in Migori where this is happening but in nearly all the county headquarters as developers discover that it is impossible to expand without doing away with some of the estates which are closest to the town centres.

“The idea actually started in Nairobi where Muthurwa estate has been almost done away with by the government to create not only a commercial area for hawkers, but also to create a bus stop,” he says.

This, he says has spread to other major towns among them Mombasa, Kisumu and Nakuru where he says some estates which were in existence in the nineties have since become extinct as they have been taken over by the towns.

And while hailing the growth in real estate across the county, George Makori, a physical planner based in Kisumu says the trend has to be checked to ensure that the zoning rules are obeyed and commercial house are not constructed deeper in residential areas where they could be a nuisance.

“While it is understandable that some of these construction companies would target estates for construction of offices, this has to be orderly so that life is not disrupted within these estates,” he says.

He says it would be wrong for constructors to move in and construct storey buildings for commercial uses deep into the estates saying some businesses like welding or even having night clubs will make it impossible for tenants around to enjoy their nights. He has, therefore, urged county governments to ensure that any expansion of the towns into the estates is well managed and that at the end of it, nobody feels aggrieved.

No disruption

However, Omondi has maintained that the expansions into the estates are usually well managed and that there is no possibility of disrupting life in the estates.

“We expand from the town side and it is not possible to get a single commercial building surrounded by residential houses. We are aware of the zoning rules and need for peace in residential areas,” He says.

He further says some of the areas which are being converted into commercial areas had been constructed to be commercial areas and only changed to residential because they were see to be too far from the town centres. “Some of these estates were meant for commercial purposes in the first place and were only tuned into residential when the owners of the houses failed to get tenants to occupy them,” he says.

He further says that unlike popular beliefs that it is the constructors and the real estate agencies which are converting the estates into commercial centres; it is mostly the owners of the houses who have realised that they can get more money when they turn the houses into commercial ones. This is supported by Ben Kenyatta, a landlord in Nyamasaria area of Kisumu town who says he has already converted two of his buildings which used to be residential into commercial use in order to get more money from them.

“I used to have two roomed houses which were earning me Sh4,000 shillings each month. I have since converted each of them into two different rooms each earning Sh4,000 meaning I now earn Sh8,000 from them,” he says.

He, however, says the current trend - although it has helped in expansion of commercial centres - is prone of abuse by unscrupulous contractors who might end up creating noisy centres within residential areas. This is supported by Omondi who says the county governments have to be keen to ensure that expansion of towns into estates is not done haphazardly and that life is not disrupted in the estates.

“The zoning of towns should be reinforced and before such expansion, the department of land has to be made aware of so that necessary adjustments like roads and other services are made,” he says.

Recommendation

He also recommends that in order to avoid constant expansion into the estates, county government’s planning departments should come up with policies which are making it compulsory for anybody who is constructing in prime areas to construct multi-storey buildings.

“With no space for expansion, it makes little sense for a constructor to put up a single storey house in a prime land,” he says, adding that any person who is keen to put up a house beside the man highways should be compelled to ensure that the house is at least five floors high.

He says the culture of constructing single storey houses is the main reason of moving into the estates as a space which can carry as many as fifty offices ends up only carrying five offices. He has also called for fresh planning of the county headquarters that will allow more space to be left for the commercial centres and residential areas to be moved further out of towns.

On his part, Migori Governor Okoth Obado has called on investors in the real estate to ensure that they stick to the zoning rules to ensure that residential areas remained quiet.

“We want the town to grow in an organised way. This can only happen when we do not mix schools, residential areas, commercial areas into one place,” he says.

He says the expansion of the town has to take into consideration the laid down rules on development to ensure expansion does not interfere with peace in the residential areas.