A team has already been appointed for the design concept. This will be a mixed use building with three quarters of the space being used for commercial purposes. The first 50 000 square meters will be ready for occupation by 2013, and the end result will be a 30 to 40 story building.

Chadrien Place, an ageing tudor block of 33 flats, each with an average value of about R1,5m a few years ago, suddenly became worth a lot of money, thanks to the Gautrain.

Old Mutual is believed to have paid R400 million to a development consortium for the Chadrien Place site, according to Ian Fife of the Financial Mail. In 2007 the consortium of Nedbank, Intaprop, Rodney Wolman and Francesco Riviera bought it for R130m, paying R7,5m to the last hold-out, a woman who bought her flat two years before for R1m.

The property has rights for a mixed-use development totalling about 120 000 square meters, but the Gautrain developers have placed restrictions on building over the train line, so they will probably develop as little as half of that.