“It was pretty run-down when I first saw it – a series of old warehouses with no vegetation.” “It was a grease and oil dust bowl,” claimed artist James Delaney, who lived in what is now Victoria Yards in Lorentzville, a poor Johannesburg area.
Mr. Delaney took a modest spot in the cluster of empty brick buildings that had primarily housed ad hoc garages since it was a handy location, much closer to downtown than where he was working at the time.
After a year, he was comfortable enough to move from the modest workshop to his current one, a 1,000-square-foot building with high ceilings and windows that flood the space with light. His trademark steel sculptures, which resemble enormous Day-Glo drawings of animals, are sprinkled throughout the workshop and other pieces such as pictures and paintings.
“There’s something about reused buildings that elevates your spirits, the atmosphere around you,” said Mr. Delaney, 50.
“However, I appreciate the fact that this has traditionally been an artisanal region.” Blue-collar skills like woodworking and metalworking come in handy when you’re manufacturing things like I do.”
Mr. Delaney is one of the project’s 50 or so tenants, the brainchild of developer Brian Green, 60. Mr. Green first saw the 200,000-square-foot site five years ago and described it as “an awful disaster and a complete mess.” Nevertheless, the urban renewal veteran could see the site’s potential, especially if his plan truly engaged the local community and produced palpable uplift for its neighbors, as he did with the former warehouses at 44 Stanley Avenue in Johannesburg and Cape Town’s 107 Bree, which reimagined a gas station and parking garage.
Mr. Green is a supporter of the 15-minute city concept, which was developed at the Sorbonne in Paris, and advocates for urban dwellers to be able to get their daily needs within a quarter-hour by foot or bike. He boasted that 60% of the people who work at Victoria Yards now live within a 15-minute walk.
Tshepo Mohlala, a denim designer, was convinced to locate his base at Victoria Yards rather than in Soweto, as he had planned. Tshepo Jeans’ 30-year-old entrepreneur claims that 90 percent of his 20-person crew lives within a quarter-mile of Victoria Yards.
“I fell in love with it because you have people that are part of that area working to make the world a better place,” he said.
He explained, “The whole objective was to produce influence and value within a place, not to pursue the individuals that are out there.” “Victoria Yards is full of progressive thinkers who can sway my opinion.”
Since his arrival three years ago, Mr. Mohlala had grown his business and now has a nearly 3,500-square-foot building where he sells and makes denim. He brought down tutors from Amsterdam’s Jean School, a denim specialist training center, to educate his seamstresses on key skills. Dark indigo denim Anansi jeans, which cost 3,500 rands (about $233), and blue-black slim-fit Takalani jeans, which cost 1,800 rands; he also makes a variety of graphic T-shirts cost 600 rands each.
Although Victoria Yards is known for its workshop spaces, it is also a fantastic shopping destination. Small chalkboards dot the pathways between the brick buildings on the site, each supporting one of the tenants like mall signs. Oscar Ncube, 37, is another local designer who runs Chiefs of Angels, specializing in leather jackets and T-shirts. Mr. Ncube refashions used clothes, much of it imported from Europe, as the foundation for some of his designs, which include tributes to Nirvana and Led Zeppelin. His Aretha and Core Joplin jackets, both 3,679 rands, are among his best-selling models.
The Coote and Wench Design Company, for example, specializes in lighting made from salvaged industrial parts; its pieces, such as the Donald wall sconce (4,800 rands) and the Duchess (3,850 rands), intended to provide ambient light in libraries, have been deployed in many of the high-end safari camps throughout southern Africa. Shwe, a sustainable bag-making enterprise that utilizes plastic waste, has printed textiles; styles include a shoulder bag for 280 rands and a tote for 249 rands.
A sustainable mission may also be found at SoBae, an ice cream business managed by a young couple who make sorbets using overripe fruit that city street sellers would otherwise discard at the end of the day. Orange-thyme and cucumber-apple-lime are among the flavors; a 4-ounce cup costs 30 rands, and a take-home 5-liter bucket costs 1,500 rands.
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DGI, a nearby studio where young painters and printmakers can come to create their work, most of which is bluntly political, before exhibiting it in a small adjacent gallery, is close by. DGI shares a courtyard with Primal Spirits, a distillery where the stills are displayed alongside a table heaped high with liquor bottles for sale; a large bottle of Union Gin costs 375 rands.
Tony Esslinger, 65, is a co-founder of the distillery. “When we saw Victoria Yards, it validated everything for us – it spoke to us from the beginning,” he explained. “It’s a true arts-and-crafts shop; goods aren’t transported through the back door and sold out front; instead, they’re manufactured and sold on the premises.”
Mr. Esslinger’s crew gathers some of the botanicals for their gins from the fruit and vegetable plots that are jigsawed in between the buildings of Victoria Yards at Primal Spirits, which opens in October 2019.
According to Mr. Esslinger, the sense of community is critical to the organization’s success. “It’s not only the light, the setting, or the space; it’s the fact that it’s a friendly collection of people from different walks of life, such a mix, but you can sit and talk.”
If Mr. Green, the developer, sticks to his plan, the group will soon grow to include: A further 107,000 square feet of space is available next door. Unfortunately, the epidemic put a stop to the expansion, but Mr. Green said he was getting back into it today. He’s also been approached about replicating the Victoria Yards project in other places, such as Stellenbosch, some 30 miles east of Cape Town and Italy. He’s also going to head to Tunisia for a similar project consultation. “Because how you understand a building depends on how it integrates into the culture around it,” he advised, “everyone is different.”
The artist, Mr. Delaney, agreed. He has worked with a number of his neighbors, including a metalworker who assists him in the creation of his sculptures. His spacious studio has also influenced his work, allowing him to experiment with larger-format sculptures.
“If it weren’t for that space, I probably wouldn’t be generating the kind of material I’m making now,” he remarked. “Having the luxury of space as an artist is a rare thing in urban places these days.”
