Under the Winter Sun on the Riviera

I trained down to Nice Thursday with two goals in mind: 1) to install and prepare for occupancy the Fractional Ownership property in Villefranche-sur-Mer, “La Belle Terrasse” and 2) sign the deed on “Le Palais du Soleil,” a Fractional Ownership property I’m developing in Nice (with occupancy starting July 1, 2022).

Looking up to La Belle Terrasse from street leve

Concierge, Roni Sexton, and I shopped all day Friday, with two marketing carts in tow, filling up her tiny Fiat 500 with all the housewares and appliances the apartment needed. Starting at Nice Home, we worked our way down to Bouchara via Hema, Monoprix and Darty, all along avenue Jean Médecin making it easy-ish. Fortunately we had with us the “Rolls-Royce” of caddies—Rolser brand six-wheelers that easily “jump” the stairs—one was mine (red) and the other (blue) owned by La Belle Terrasse. (I highly recommend these for anyone needing to navigate stairs.)

Nice Home is a great place to get such housewares, with prices that rival Ikea’s. The long-awaited Ikea in Nice is scheduled to open its doors in mid May of this year. Located in the Éco-Vallée de Nice, the Ikea building will also accommodate 26 other shops on the ground floor with 24,000 square meters of retail sales space, 2,000 parking spaces and the creation of 450 jobs, the first Ikea store will open in Nice on May 11, 2022. Until then, we’re doing our shopping in town and Nice Home is a good substitute for basic accessories.

Saturday we unloaded the caddies in the apartment, now in its final stages of renovation. The day was one of those stunners, when even in January, Villefranche-sur-Mer was hoppin’ with activity. The sky was blue blue; the water a beautiful aqua and the waterfront was filled with lunchers. We were among them…quite happily.

I hadn’t seen the apartment for a couple of weeks, and with each visit, it has become more beautiful. It was shocking to see how the changes we made to the layout of the kitchen opened up the space to feel twice as large, and how opening the window at the end of the kitchen to full size took your eye straight to the sea. (I will never understand why the previous owner chose to cover half that window with a kitchen cabinet!) The sun pouring in the bedroom window coupled with a color scheme of golden yellows and a range of aqua blues lit up the entire apartment with life. I can’t wait for the fuschia-colored Bougainvillea outside that window to be in full bloom!

We loaded the cabinets and drawers with all the housewares and then positioned the artwork where we thought they might work well, sat back and reveled in our accomplishment. There are a few missing pieces to our perfect puzzle, that we’ll acquire in the next couple of weeks, mostly all in time for the first owners to arrive on January 20th. We are confident they will love the apartment, and the town, as much as we do.

(If you are interested in a share of La Belle Terrasse, visit our website or contact us)

Le Palais du Soleil will be our second project in the region. The signing of the deed was supposed to take place today, but the transfer of funds delayed the signing to later this week. No matter! Martine di Mattéo and her crew are coming to Nice next week to work on two of our clients’ properties and this one. There’s no website to send you to…not yet. We have much work to do to prepare the shares for sale and get the apartment up and running. Floor plans have been proposed and we’ll finalize those this week. Then, the work can begin on what is currently a total “wreck,” not having been occupied for a very long time.

The current living room in Le Palais du Soleil

I love wrecks like this when one can totally transform the space. In this case, it’s a one bedroom/one bathroom with separate kitchen that will become a two bedroom/two bathroom with open kitchen. Currently, when you enter the apartment, the foyer with all its doors to the various rooms and closets, blocks the views from the balconies and the rounded corner windows. In our new floor plan, by architect Nicole Champagnol, every current wall will come down and reordered. When you enter, you will see everything immediately—a 180° view out the front balcony, side balcony and rounded corner windows! I can’t wait to get started!

The current entry foyer in the apartment

It looks like I’ll be in Nice quite a lot this coming year working on these projects…but you’ll get no complaint from me. Yep, Nice is awfully nice!

(If you are interested in a share of Le Palais du Soleil, contact us)

A la prochaine…