City Hall orders property owners to repaint CBD buildings
Property owners within Central Business District (CBD) have two weeks to repaint and redecorate their premises or face legal action.
Acting County Secretary Leboo Morintat said that upon expiry of the 14 days, necessary legal measures will be instituted to ensure the notice is fully complied with.
The notice, he said, is anchored by the law including county by-laws and the Public Health Cap 242 which talks of maintaining healthy and quality standards of general public health.
Mr Morintat, without giving any specific colour that the building owners should adopt, explained that the move to clean, repaint or redecorate is aimed at improving the aesthetic and beauty of the capital city.
This is to enhance the appeal of the city which has been globally recognized among the most dynamic, innovative resilient cities and is also a strategic economic and commercial hub of East and Central Africa.
“It is hereby notified to all property owners in the Nairobi CBD that they should clean, repaint or redecorate their buildings as required by law,” said Mr Morintat on Wednesday in a public notice published in one of the local dailies.
At the same time, the public notice also gave blanket approval to property owners to improve plot frontages – the area between a plot boundary and road kerb, a raised edge of a pavement which separates it from the road, with approved concrete blocks.
This will affect properties within and along Uhuru Highway, Nairobi River and Ring Road Pumwani, and Haile Selassie Avenue.
If successfully implemented, Nairobi will become the second county after Mombasa to effect such a directive.
In June, last year, Governor Hassan Joho issued an executive order requiring residential and commercial buildings in Mombasa’s Central Business District (CBD) be painted with a uniform colour, which in this case was blue to symbolize the Indian Ocean.
However, this is not the first time that the county government has called on property owners within the city to repaint their buildings.
In May this year, City Hall gave the same property owners with properties within the city centre 30 days to paint and carry out renovations to their buildings with Governor Mike Sonko warning of stern action against individuals who will fail to comply with the order.
“County laws require that property owners repaint their premises after every two years to maintain healthy and quality standards and so those who have not complied with the by-laws should do so before we start taking action,” said Sonko at the time.
Nonetheless, this was after a similar order in January this same year where the owners of buildings in the city centre were directed to repaint their buildings as part of the then ongoing beautification project in the city.