Almada Project Overview

For those of you that can or wish to read an architectural layout of our project on Almada street in Porto, the following three diagrams illustrate the project nicely but for those of you like myself who glaze over them, I will describe it in a fashion that you might visualize the undertaking. In simple terms there are two buildings separated by a garden and a patio. The main house facing directly on Rua do Almada is three stories in height and was built in the 19th century as a player piano store and a grand residence. The ground floor of this building is composed of two commercial spaces separated by a common hallway leading from the front door into a rustic stone patio. There is a lift in the corner that connects, by rising one floor, to the garden above and from here down a walkway to the modern triplex secluded at the rear of the property. The second floor of the main building, reached via elevator, contains two very large apartments and a new kitchen module that also connects directly into the rear garden. The third floor reached by elevator in the Main building is the site of three apartments. In total there are eight apartments and two commercial areas in the project.

The Purchase and plan…..

When we purchased the old piano building five years ago, it had lain dormant and been neglected for about fifty years or so. Its’ roof was fallen in, the floors had rotted into a wonderful pigeon roost of a beautiful building. Good bones, I believe is the real estate term. So we bought the bones with idea that we could rebuild it beyond its’ past glory and create a compound of apartments that our friends could stay in for extended visits as a welcome change from the hurly burly of whatever ailed them. Each apartment was to have a complete state of the art kitchen and everything necessary for a comfortable long term stay. On the ground floor would be Marianne’s new store with the companion commercial/ communal space providing a meeting place for members of this little community of visitors. Straight forward, succinct and ideal.

Ensuing three years of construction in Porto….

 Four years of construction in Portugal, it turns out, is at least a couple of lifetimes, it’s a long time to keep focused on the idealism and the plan. We weathered a few scoundrels, sophisticated engineering dilemmas, design anomalies, licensing constraints and financial issues, just to name a few of the “entrepreneurial bumps” that were encountered and to a degree surmounted. Oh yes Covid 19 , did I over-look that ? Slowly, over and through these travails, the compound and the buildings have taken shape and their beauty could be seen and sensed. Additionally something more ephemeral began to make its’ presence felt in the form of a type of cooperation and help that I hadn’t previously consciously thought about or considered needing. As this project began to grow, I had some mis-givings and wondered if we were up to it because the financing, planning and complexity of this sort of compound construction was quite a stretch. It certainly wasn’t like painting the kitchen. I think the word I am looking for and my reader is already imagining mentally : naïveté. There I said it. Many times we have felt helplessly outmatched, but fortunately for us we have good friends, some of whom bought an apartment early on and two others who stepped in with funds to keep construction going. We really needed this help and it has demonstrated that it is necessary and healthy to inter-connect and work together. As it is said, you are never too old to learn! inter-connect and work together….

 Regarding the plan and the future…. 

The future….now that takes some chutzpah! Who at this time and place would hazard a prediction of the future. The future you say, hmmm.. as you read this we are most likely existing in a quasi-situation that very few of us could have imagined when we initiated our building project four years ago. This “project” that has been variously called the old piano building, The almada project and most recently the American refugee center was also hard to predict. Disclaimer: I’m aware that some of my colleagues find the idea of “American refugees” off-putting or perhaps insulting to other refugees, like it’s a joke but unfortunately times have changed more than a little bit. Today I see that my fellow American citizens have gained a certain “super spreader” notoriety and have been momentarily banished behind the “covid curtain” precluding travel to the European Union for the foreseeable future. This situation will pass, of that I’m sure but at the moment it dents the whole refugee concept and I really really miss all the visits from our friends, having dinners and enjoying the pleasures of Portugal and of course, like probably everyone, we have spent good deal of time sequestered at home re-evaluating and re-considering our planning for…(timidly) the future.

Re-thinking project and plan

Our original plan of hosting friends and acquaintances in a safe secure beautiful city like Porto in an intentional community was, I think, a good one but we have altered it a bit. Our intention was to always live in the building that we have been working on, develop the new KOKO store and we still look forward to doing just that. One area of re-consideration is the common meeting place. This was envisioned as a light dining area or yoga/ therapeutic center or a design studio at various stages. For this unit we are open to creative ideas for its’ use and would welcome partnering in some fashion. To that end this commercial condominium could be sold or developed together. Another realization during this time is that neither Marianne nor I wished to manage or do the administration for eight or nine rentals. One or two apartments possibly, so with that consideration, we are listing a number of units for sale in both the old and the new building in the project. These units are each self-standing condominium units and perhaps if like minded friends and acquaintances purchase the units we may very well have an interesting community, a home away from home so to speak. (We have them all priced and if you are reading this email there is some flexibility for friends).