One tends to think of Milan as the scintillating capital of the Italian economy, home to the glitter, glamour and hype of finance and fashion, of design, marketing and advertising, of expensive restaurants and Europe’s first seven-star hotel. But beneath all that, under the archaeological strata of decades of economic and social evolution, the city’s old heart of nuts-and-bolts industry is still, here and there, feebly beating.
Once upon a time there were real factories inside the city itself. Even Alfa Romeo’s main manufacturing plant until the 1970s, Il Portello, was well within the city limits. There were factories of all kinds, producing everything from car parts and air conditioners to electronics and pharmaceuticals, from household appliances and lighting to furniture and kitchen components. They were surrounded by a vast flowering of craftsmen and workshops catering to their needs and, of course, a population of working class blue- and white-collar workers and their families who lived close to their jobs.
The factories have gone, shut down or relocated many miles outside the city. Some of the old quartieri industriali have been largely demolished and replaced by high-rise residential housing or office buildings. But some survive, at least in part, and are becoming a favourite target for real estate developers large and small, including professionals and enterprising amateurs.
A classic example from the past is the Navigli in south-west Milan, a former industrial and working-class neighbourhood around the city’s canals. Students, hippies and artists started moving there in the late 1960s because it was cheap and “earthy”. But for the past 20 years it has been the height of fashion and just as expensive as any of the traditionally classy neighbourhoods of central Milan. The entire area has been renovated and is now a little like London’s Little Venice on a larger scale.
Fortunately, there are other quartieri industriali in Milan – perhaps not as scenically impressive as the Navigli, with its canals, bridges and barges, but with plenty of scope for turning factory buildings and warehouses into loft apartments, offices and studios at interesting prices.
One area that many Milanese are talking about these days is around Via Varesina, in the north-west part of the city. As the crow flies, this is only about 3km from the centre and close to the newly built faculties of architecture, engineering and design of the Politecnico, Milan’s elite science and technology university.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Italy struggled to recover from the second world war, the city authorities promoted the establishment of factories and workshops in the area. Today, two of these properties have already been transformed by developers into loft apartments and studios. But there are plenty of other industrial and commercial buildings that someone with ready cash and an adventurous spirit could easily transform.
Until around 2003 the Pagani factory, covering an entire block between Via Varesina and Via Villapizzone, was still producing headlights and other components for motorcycles and mopeds. It comprises about a dozen interconnected buildings – mostly long, low workshops and warehouses – served by driveways and a couple of broad “piazzas”. In 2003 a group of investors bought the entire factory complex and divided it up among themselves. Part of the land was used to build The Chedi, the only European hotel of the Singapore-based GHM chain, along with a block of short-term service flats.
The rest of the old buildings were divided up into loft units of various shapes and sizes and sold individually. In some cases investors bought more than one unit and subsequently resold or are now trying to sell them separately. Most of the people now living in the Pagani bought an empty, unfinished space, which they completed themselves. Now, in addition to about 100 residential loft apartments, the complex houses a theatre workshop, a small television studio used to film a reality programme, a fashion showroom and the homes/studios of a painter and a photographer.
Barbara Piccioli, one of Italy’s best known translators of Anglo-American literature, moved there in 2005, after living for many years in one of Milan’s most staidly respectable areas. “In 2004 I was about to buy the flat I was living in,” she recounts. “The price was right but at the last minute the owners changed their minds. I did not want to go on paying rent; I wanted a house of my own to do with as I pleased. A friend who happened to be one of the original [Pagani] investors suggested I take a look at the Via Varesina factory. I picked out part of an ex-workshop, still full of rusty bits of machinery, a few motorbike parts and just plain rubbish. The driveway was unpaved, a mixture of rubble and mud, and the garden was, well, rubble and mud.”
But Piccioli could buy 100 sq metres of ground space with a 6-metre-high vaulted ceiling and 140 sq metres of garden for her dogs. She paid €253,000 and spent another €150,000 on renovation. “It was a mixture of love at first sight and terror,“ she says, “like embarking on a love affair with a famous outlaw. But I saw the possibilities; with 6 metres’ height I could build a second floor inside, put walls where I wanted, basically fill an empty box.”
Piccioli’s new neighbours include a pianist, a photographer, an interior decorator, a disc jockey and a painter. Many are singles but there are also a few families with children. “It is like a village; most of us know each other,” she says. “The only risk is that it could become a kind of compound with respect to the rest of the neighbourhood. There was a vote recently in favour of installing a system of video cameras and a 24-hour security guard at the main gate. I find this a little unpleasant, although many say they feel more comfortable.”
A second converted factory, a tall, three-storey building complex around a central courtyard, where diesel engines were once assembled and overhauled, is two blocks away on Via Ajraghi, a side-street off Via Varesina. Serenella Hugony, a drama lecturer at Milan’s Theatre Academy, bought a ground-floor loft with 10-metre-high ceilings there in 2004 and moved in in 2006. “I had no doubts,” she recalls. “I wanted a loft, saw several and picked this one.”
She built three “levels” inside and furnished it with period and modern furniture and her impressive collection of paintings. A prominent feature is a large Murano chandelier hanging in the central area. “I wanted a very cold, spartan structure that I could make warm with the furnishings,” she explains.
One question that new Via Varesina residents often ask themselves is to what extent the creation of these two loft complexes, a total of perhaps 200 units, will affect the old working-class neighbourhood around them. They hope, naturally enough, that in the long term the developments will open the way to broader improvements. But at the moment the ex-factories seem like fashionable but somewhat alien enclaves largely isolated from their surroundings.
“So far that is indeed the case,” confirms Fabio Soragna, a pianist and composer who bought a loft in the Pagani factory for €210,000 in 2004 and moved in in 2006 after spending another €130,000 on finishing it. “In my contacts with the people outside, when I tell them where I live, I get the feeling that they think: ‘Ah, one of the rich people playing at living in an ex-factory.’ But we’ll gradually shake this off, starting with contacts and relationships with the local tradesmen. If I need a carpenter or a plumber I go to the ones around here. I use the local supermarket and the shops on Via Varesina. We are still getting to know the other people who have bought lofts but we are also becoming acquainted with those outside.”
“For me, the great thing is that I can play the piano any time I like without having the neighbours thumping on the walls.”
Valentino De Marzo, a local estate agent, believes the neighbourhood will gradually change over the next three to four years. “There is already a trend of buying and transforming,” he says. “When one of the small factories or warehouses closes down, or, in the case of rented premises, when the 12-year contract expires, the landlords [or owners] are not looking for another industrial or commercial enterprise but are thinking of transforming [the spaces] into loft apartments. Many are holding out, waiting for prices to rise, but the trend is there. Regarding the existing conventional flats in the area, there are signs that, in spite of the slump produced by high mortgage rates, the turnover is starting to accelerate.”
Guido Lodigiani, head of the Milan-based research department of Gabetti, one of Italy’s largest real estate agencies, also believes the neighbourhood has potential. “Given its industrial history, Milan has a number of areas where old factories, workshops and warehouses are being turned into loft-type housing. The Via Varesina area has the advantage that it has not been developed much yet. Also, the new presence of the Politecnico faculties should gradually draw university people there. The area has not really taken off yet but I’m pretty sure that buying there would be a good medium-term investment – say over the next five years.”
A completely refurbished loft in the Pagani factory, similar to that bought and restructured by Piccioli, is now being advertised at €515,000 – or €3,200 per sq metre, which compares favourably with the €3,500 per sq metre asked for conventional flats in the area and the €6,000-€9,000 typical in central Milan.
Around Via Varesina a few of the industrial buildings, such as a motorcycle sales and service centre and a large metal-working and machine shop, are still operating. Others are shut down, presumably waiting for a buyer. Still others have been demolished and new apartment blocks are being built in their place. Interestingly, the architects’ paintings in front of the building sites show blocks that look substantially more luxurious than the low-budget ones now typical of the area. Both these new, conventional flats and the lofts in former industrial sites are aimed at a more affluent buyer. It’s just the kind of mix that gives neighbourhoods like this an irresistible life of their own.
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Local agents
Valentino De Marzo, tel: +39 02-327 1799
Classimobili, tel: +39 02-2911 1777; www.classimmobili.it
