Although from 1988 to 2000 the City Engineering Department of Roodepoort investigated the possibility of developing the farm Paardekraal in Soweto, this was never realized due to difficulties experienced with bulk engineering services in the area. The site was also zoned as mining land and later rezoned as industrial land. Due to the high demand for low-income housing in Gauteng, the process of rezoning the land as residential commenced in 2005 when the Pennyville Extension 1 project was launched. The project resulted from a land exchange agreement between Pennyville Zamimphilo Relocation Pty (Ltd) (PZR) and the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality (COJ). This agreement required PZR to develop the Pennyville land on behalf of the COJ’s Department of Housing and, in exchange, PZR received the Riverlea Extension 3 land on which all civil engineering services had been constructed by the Northern Metropolitan Local Council in the 1990s. Riverlea required limited upgrading and maintenance of the roads and stormwater infrastructure in order to market and build bonded houses on the development. The Pennyville Extension 1 property is 99,5 hectares in extent and consists of 1 117 RDP-type units on Residential 1 stands and 1 693 units in two-story and three-story buildings on Residential 3 stands. The Residential 3 stands are being registered as Section 21 companies under the names of the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Pty) Ltd (JOSHCO) and ABSA, who will manage the units as ‘rental stock’ to the public.

The layout also makes provision for one school site, three crèche sites, one business site, and five public open space sites. PZR appointed a professional team of consultants and contractors to assist them in implementing the project. As there was some urgency to the project, it had to be undertaken in four phases in order for design and construction work to run concurrently. The link sewers of each phase drain to four different locations where they discharge into the Klipspruit relief outfall sewer, the minor drop structure number 1 of the Bushkoppie outfall sewer, and the Noordgesig link sewer. One of the prerequisites of JW, before they would approve the township application, was that it had to be proved that these sewers possessed the available spare capacity. A sub-contractor was appointed to do ultrasonic flow depth measurements which were then used to determine the existing flow rates and available spare capacities. The existing aboveground steel Klipspruit relief outfall sewer into which phase 4 would discharge had to be inspected by means of closed-circuit television (CCTV) and jetted clean of any evident blockages before the link sewer of phase 4 could be connected to it.