The Johannesburg Sun Hotel is an abandoned twin-tower skyscraper hotel in the Central Business District of

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

History

The smaller 22-storey rear tower was built in 1970 as The Tollman Towers hotel, owned by the prominent hotelier Stanley Tollman. The property was purchased by

Sol Kerzner Solomon Kerzner, (23 August 1935 – 21 March 2020) was a South African accountant and business magnate. He founded both of South Africa's largest hotel groups, the Southern Sun Hotel Group and Sun International. He was also the Founder, Chair ...

's Southern Sun Hotels in the early 1980s and totally rebuilt at a cost of R100 million, with the addition of the 40-storey main tower, linked to the older building by a four-story podium with a

pool Pool may refer to: Water pool * Swimming pool, usually an artificial structure containing a large body of water intended for swimming * Reflecting pool, a shallow pool designed to reflect a structure and its surroundings * Tide pool, a rocky po ...

deck and a

running track An all-weather running track is a rubberized, artificial running surface for track and field athletics. It provides a consistent surface for competitors to test their athletic ability unencumbered by adverse weather conditions. Historically, v ...

. The complex re-opened in 1985 as the 672-room Johannesburg Sun and Towers. As the neighbourhood decayed, the luxury hotel was converted to a Holiday Inn Garden Court, with only 270 rooms remaining in use, but the lack of demand for hotels in the CBD eventually caused the hotel to close completely, in September 1998. It reopened very briefly for the

Earth Summit 2002 The World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002, took place in South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss ustainable developmentorganizations, 10 years after the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (It was the ...

on sustainable development as the KwaDukuza eGoli Hotel, a name meaning ''Gathering Place in the City of Gold''. The hotel was owned by Mark Whitehead of Whitehead Enterprises. It hosted 2,000 police officers, but their stay was marred by a murder in the hotel and severe problems with the physical systems of the building. The hotel soon went out of business again. The building is currently "mothballed."

References

Hotel buildings completed in 1970 Hotel buildings completed in 1985 Skyscrapers in Johannesburg Skyscraper hotels Defunct hotels Hotels in South Africa {{SouthAfrica-struct-stub