An Abandoned Chocolate Factory Holds a Sweet Surprise: An Elegant Holiday Home

livemint.com:

When Dirk Ruttens went shopping for a holiday home in Spain, he wasn’t interested in a cookie-cutter modern waterfront apartment or a traditional country finca. A veteran renovator and an aficionado of industrial architecture, Ruttens wanted a unusual building that he could transform into a distinctive family bolt-hole. He found his project in the form of a disused former chocolate factory in the small town of La Bisbal d’Empordà, in the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain.

Taking a less-is-more approach to the 200-year-old building, Ruttens and his team of architects have managed to repurpose it as a contemporary holiday home while carefully protecting its original features. “I have been restoring houses all my life. It is a kind of hobby for me, but I had never done something abroad," said Ruttens, who lives in the town of Linden, some 20 miles east of Brussels, the capital of Belgium.

“I wanted a home in Spain because I like the food, and the culture and I like the climate of Catalonia, which is not as hot as it is in other parts of Spain. It is very green, and it is easy to reach from home." In 2014, Ruttens, 58, who works in human resources for a multinational medical-research company, began searching for potential properties online. He initially ruled out the chocolate factory because, he said, it was listed for $630,240, which was more than he wanted to spend.

But, over the course of the next few months, its price was reduced to $472,590. In 2015, Ruttens negotiated to buy the roughly 6,500-square-foot property for $346,630. The three-story factory building was in sound structural condition when Ruttens took it on, although some of the windows were broken, and a stone lean-to in the backyard was falling apart.