April 24, 2003
By Lucille Davie
MILPARK has The Gas Works, The Film School, The Old Bakery . . . now it has The Refinery, an almost-complete, exciting loft apartment complex on the corner of Owl Street and Stanley Avenue.
The development promises to make the existing somewhat dull warehouse/office space into a vibrant residential enclave, offering owners and tenants a secure community environment with unusual living spaces.
The developers, businessman Ricci Polack and architect Jorge Rodriguez, recently bought the rather nondescript old Chubb offices in Milpark, plus two adjoining office buildings and plan to convert the offices into 29 loft apartments ranging in size from 125 to 700 square metres, or about 8 000 square metres of living space in all.
The buildings are between 30 and 50 years old and are solid office structures, with wide walls of industrial metal windows, concrete floors, cranky lifts and metal fire escape stairways.
All the apartments have double-volume ceilings and concrete floors. Some apartments are single storey, others are two storeys, and still others take up three storeys, one of them retaining the existing metal-cage lift.
The apartments were going for between R200 000 and R500 000 as a bare shell, with no fittings like kitchen or bathroom. Polack is happy to equip the apartments, and depending on the finish and detail, the cost comes in at an additional R35 000 to R80 000. Alternatively, the new owner can bring in their own architect.
As you can imagine, at those prices and that freedom to create your own living space, the apartments sold long before building even started, all by word of mouth.
Polack says he spent a year and a half negotiating to buy the buildings, first looking in Newtown and parts of Randburg for the right building. He then spotted the For Sale sign on this building, and the ball started rolling.
The first task was to strip out the dry office walling, build new walls to separate the apartments, and re-plumb and re-wire the entire building.
Walking through the building, it's not hard to see the potential of the space, with free-flowing living areas allowing the imagination to run riot. Some apartments are already taking shape: there's a step-in sunken bath alongside a large concrete basin, with an large industrial chrome stove being put in place in the middle of the kitchen; in another a ball and claw bath sits happily in the middle of the bathroom, set against with a wall of square glass bricks, overlooked by a mezzanine bedroom area.
Because of the high ceilings many apartment owners are going to throw up stairways to a convenient mezzanine level, using the space productively.
Polack's two-storey apartment is already complete: you walk into a large open-plan living area with a concrete floor and brick wall, offset against a long gleaming wooden kitchen counter, with the rest of the kitchen behind the counter and below a row of metal windows, with sunlight streaming into the space.
The stairway to the first floor from the living area and kitchen
The second level, up a wood and metal stairway which starts with two-metre long steps, and becomes smaller as it reaches the top, is also flooded with sunlight with a row of windows on either side of the room. The floor is covered with coir carpeting, and behind a half wall is the bathroom, with large square black-slate tiles on the floor and halfway up the walls. The waist-high cupboard doors are chrome and the sparkling white bath is raised and surrounded by the black tiles, up against a row of large windows - a very pleasing place.
Above the bathroom a mezzanine floor has been added, for use as a bedroom, and reached via a single, straight wooden stairway.
In four months Polack hopes to have the first 18 apartments of the complex complete and occupied. The complex will eventually have a gym, a pool and Martini pool set in a garden in an inner courtyard, a laundry, and an open-air Japanese teriyaki grill where tenants can order a breakfast from the kitchen any morning of the week. The kitchen and grill area are available for hire by tenants. Parking is available on the ground and basement levels of the complex, which will be monitored by 24-hour security guards and cameras.
Two of the three buildings will have roof gardens.
This is Polack's first development, having dabbled in architecture and engineering work previously. It can be tiring, muddy, messy work but he says: "It's hard work, but fun."
There's sure to be a long waiting list for his next apartment development.
