It seems Cape Town will soon be a contender for having one of the world’s greenest buildings.Following the global trend of transforming the way buildings are built the Cape Town International Convention Centre is set for a multi-billion rand overhaul.This is expected to be completed after the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

With high expectations for the World Cup itself we should remember that it will come to an end and we should plan for the future following it.The convention centre is already extremely popular with international tourists that bring in millions of rands for our tourism industry.

The expansion will include a hotel for the visitors from out of town and perhaps even office space.It will have fynbos planted on the roof to further emphasise it’s green intentions,wind turbines will be installed to generate renewable energy and the toilets will utilize recycled water.These are just a few of the things the developers will be implementing to increase the buildings Green status.

The development has set a goal of 6-stars,this is the highest level in Green building and will rank the Capetonian building among some of the best in the world.It will be interesting to see the knock-on effects of this decision, South Africa may become on of the world’s Greenest countries if this example is followed.

This is good news for us all.We should see a further increase in the tourism industry and all the investors out there who do short term letting should see a year round income.This is due to the fact that the convention centres activities are not related to the time of year or weather we expect.

So after the excitement of the World Cup has faded there is something else for us to look forward to.It will probably look pretty interesting as you approach it with those wind turbines,but it may just distract visitors from that unfinished fly-over in the vicinity.