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Ninety-seven homes have already been sold at the Crossways Farm Village and eventually 700 will be offered up, The Herald reports.
The village, about half an hour’s drive from Port Elizabeth, is known for its pastoral setting, with residents living in farm-like surroundings surrounded by nature.
Crossways has its own electrical substation and buys electricity directly from Eskom. It even has its own wastewater treatment plant and buys its water directly from the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality.
An opening ceremony was held in March for the village’s new access road, which was built by Crossways’ own developers with help from the surrounding community.
Crossways Farm Village was co-developed by Dr Chris Mulder of CMAI Architects, which was responsible for transforming Knysna’s Thesen Island into a world-class development.
The team scouted several locations around South Africa and finally decided on land near the Van Staden’s River bridge.
So far R18m has been spent on the project which will be finished in seven years’ time, with another R150-million to R200-million likely to be invested.
“As the newest town on the border between the Kouga local municipality and Nelson Mandela Bay Crossways Farm Village was conceived around five basic principles — food security, rural development, job creation, poverty alleviation and training.”
Dr Chris Mulder
“The vision with my co-founder, David Osborne, from the beginning was to establish an entirely new town that would thrive on locally produced agriculture, create jobs and train the local community while giving back through a community trust.”
Constant construction provides employment, with local people from nearby Thornhill working on site.
“We design the street lights ourselves, we use local carpenters and everything is either done locally or regionally,” Mulder says.
