Repainting Mixed-Use Strata Buildings: Shops Below, Apartments Above
Walk down Sydney Road, Swan Street, Barkly Street or almost any shopping strip in Melbourne and much of what you see is mixed-use strata: cafes, shops and offices at street level, apartments above, all sharing one building and one owners corporation. When that building is due for a repaint, the job is more complicated than a purely residential block of the same size. There are more stakeholders, more conflicting priorities and more ways for the scope to go wrong.
This guide covers what is different about mixed-use buildings and how to plan the work so it actually gets approved and finished.
Two kinds of owner, one facade
In a mixed-use scheme the commercial lots and the residential lots usually share common property, including the external walls, but they do not experience the building the same way. Residential owners care about appearance, disruption at home and keeping levies down. Commercial owners, and the tenants who lease from them, care about the shopfront, trading hours, signage and anything that blocks customers from the door.
Many larger mixed-use schemes are set up with more than one owners corporation, or with rules and lot liability that treat retail and residential lots differently. That structure matters for who approves the work and who pays for which part of it. Before a scope is written, the committee should confirm with its manager how the plan of subdivision and the rules allocate the facade, the shopfront zone and the awning. Our guide to common property versus lot owner painting responsibilities covers the general principles, but on mixed-use buildings the plan itself is what decides.
Splitting the scope by zone
The cleanest way to handle a mixed-use building is to scope it in zones rather than as one facade.
The upper residential facade is the part above the awning line, which behaves much like any other apartment building and is usually the bulk of the area and the access cost.
The street level and shopfronts are where the shopfront framing, piers, fascia above the windows, and any painted render or masonry at pedestrian height sit. This zone takes the most wear, graffiti and impact damage, and it is often the part that most needs work.
Awnings and verandahs are steel or timber canopies over the footpath, often with soffits, fascias and downpipes of their own.
Rear elevations, laneways and loading areas are usually plainer surfaces, but often where bins, services and graffiti accumulate.
Pricing each zone separately lets the committee see exactly what each part costs, makes any agreed cost allocation between lot types straightforward, and stops the shopfront work from being lost inside a single lump sum.
What sits with the tenant, not the building
Shopfront glazing systems, tenant signage, roller shutters, internal fit-outs and anything a tenant installed under their lease are usually not common property, and painting over a tenant's sign or shutter without agreement is a fast way to start a dispute. A good scope lists these exclusions plainly, and identifies items the committee may want to offer to tenants as a separate, privately paid add-on while access is already in place.
Staging around trading
The biggest practical difference is time. Scaffold or an elevated platform across a shopfront affects customers, deliveries and signage visibility. Common approaches include working the street level outside trading hours, early mornings or on the days a business is closed, staging the facade so no shop is covered for longer than necessary, and keeping entries clear with protected walkways where scaffold crosses a doorway. Footpath occupation and hoarding generally need council permits with their own conditions and time limits, which is part of why access is priced as its own line.
All of this is easier if tenants hear about it early. We identify every affected tenancy at scoping and build a communication plan into the program, much as we describe in our guide to how long a strata repaint takes.
Coatings for the street
Street-level surfaces on a shopping strip take abuse that upper levels never see. Hard-wearing, washable finishes make sense on piers and lower walls, and on many strips an anti-graffiti system at pedestrian height is worth pricing as an option. Our guide to anti-graffiti coatings for strata buildings explains the difference between sacrificial and permanent systems. Steel awning frames and shopfront framing usually need rust treatment and an appropriate metal primer before topcoat, the same approach we use under our Balcony, Balustrade and Handrail Coatings service.
Heritage overlays cover many of Melbourne's older shopping strips, and they can affect colour schemes and whether previously unpainted masonry can be painted at all. Check the overlay position with council before the colour scheme is locked in.
Funding and approval
Because the shopfront zone and awning are often the most worn, mixed-use buildings sometimes stage the work: street level first, upper facade in a later year. That spreads the cost, but it also means paying for access and mobilisation more than once. Our Multi-Year Maintenance Programs service sets out that trade-off so the committee can decide with the numbers in front of it.
Getting it scoped
If your scheme has shops below and apartments above, send us the address, the number of commercial tenancies and any recent condition or maintenance plan reports. Through our Owners Corporation Quoting and Compliance service we will scope the building by zone, flag tenant-owned items and access permits, and give your committee a priced program it can compare with confidence.