Regarding the plan..
You are reading this existing in a quasi-situation that I didn’t imagine when we initiated our building project that has been variously been called the Old Piano store, Almada 579 and recently the American Refugee Center. 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 is a joke but no, times have changed more than a little bit. Today I see that my fellow American citizens, as a nation, have gained a certain “super spreader” notoriety that have been banished behind the “covid curtain” precluding travel to the European Union for the foreseeable future. Naturally this sort of puts the kibosh on the whole refugee idea for the moment unless you are willing to be “underground railroaded” through Mexico or Canada fly to Morocco or Sweden and slip in stealthily, in the fashion known to countless illegal visitors from time immemorial as invisible. Ok. you don’t need to be bummed out (nor do I) but I can’t help but broach these previously unspoken topics at the opening of this missive since it involves a certain cache of idealism and vision nourished over the past three years, that may be crushed, smothered, neglected, laughed at and rendered unworkable.( But let’s not go there….)
Here is the idea…..
We purchased the nineteenth century player piano building in Porto Portugal. Neglected for the past fifty years or so, its roof was fallen in, the floors 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 the idea that we could rebuild it to even 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 would have its complete state of the art kitchen and everything necessary for a comfortable long term stay. On the ground floor would be Marianne’s store and a meeting place where members of this little community could meet and enjoy a libation and good company.( Ok, I said initially there was an element or two of idealism)
The ensuing three years construction….
Three years of construction in Portugal is long time. I’m serious, it is a long time to keep a focus on the idealism etc. We weathered a few scoundrels, sophisticated engineering dilemmas, design problems, licensing constraints and financial issues, just to name a few of the “entrepreneurial bumps” that were encountered and to a degree surmounted. Oh yeah Covid 19, did I over-look that cherry on the top? Slowly, over and through these travails, the compound and buildings slowly took shape and the 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 sensed that I had drastically under-estimated certain areas of financing, planning and indeed the complexity of this sort of compound construction.This type of construction was quite another degree of fabrication from a kitchen remodel or painting the front room. I think the word I am looking for and my reader is screaming mentally is: naïveté. There, I said it. Fortunately for me, I have good friends some of whom bought an apartment early on and two others who stepped in with funds to keep the construction going. I really needed this sort of help to more or less “save me from myself “ as is said. Put another way, this project has demonstrated that it is necessary and healthy to inter-connect and work together