IN THE SPOTLIGHT: JONATHAN LIEBMANN - CEO OF PROPERTUITY

***He is also known for the development of The Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg.Young urban entrepreneur Jonathan Liebmann is dispelling myths left, right and centre: Property entrepreneurs need to be older, more established. Wrong. Johannesburg as a hip urban centre is a thing of the past. Wrong. Businesses can’t thrive in the centre of town. Wrong. Welcome to Maboneng Precinct, which is breathing life back into Joburg’s CBD.In downtown Johannesburg on the far east side of the city, a group of twenty-something-year-olds are running a neighbourhood that they’ve transformed from a no-go area into a hip, vibrant urban community. Take a walk down the street here and you’ll pass trendy restaurants and coffee bars.Look up and you’ll see modern urban apartments and rooftop hangouts where young professionals, creatives and entrepreneurs take in the sunset over the city skyline. There are art galleries, collaborative work spaces, cinemas, and there is an eclectic mix of people on the street – international tourists and homecoming-revolution expats, business people, students and artists.The pavements are clean and tree-lined and the area is well-maintained. It’s an equally far cry from the seedier areas of town and the high-walled, electric-fenced suburbs of the North.This is the Maboneng Precinct and ten years ago its very existence would have been unimaginable. The east side of Johannesburg was seedy, crime-ridden and dilapidated. Much of central Johannesburg still is:The Stock Exchange and big business had long-since moved out, making Sandton the new CBD. Respectable people didn’t want to drive through there; the suggestion that they live there would have been at once horrifying and laughable.And then a youngster came home from a gap year overseas, and felt an aching longing for the urban lifestyle he’d experienced and come to love in cities around the world. Why, he asked, wasn’t the same thing possible in Joburg.His name is Jonathan Liebmann and what’s remarkable about his story is that he has almost single-handedly breathed life into Maboneng. There are of course countless examples of urban renewal in cities around the world, but most of them required the intervention of a forward-thinking mayor or no-nonsense police chief to clean up the crime, and the strategic input and collective effort of a dedicated municipality – not to mention some kind of incentive scheme to entice business and people back to the city.Maboneng has had none of that and yet it’s achieved what most people would have thought impossible. Not only has it attracted individuals, businesses, tourists and retailers, but it’s become sought-after, trendy, the place to see and be seen.Visit Market on Main – the market in the Arts on Main block – on a Sunday morning and you’ll struggle to find parking. The hotels and apartments are all 100% occupied or sold. This is not a lone street that’s being doggedly occupied by some brave coffee vendors and a couple of urbanites wistfully trying to make-believe they’re in London/New York/Paris. This is a full-fledged neighbourhood.