Hidden gem hub rises up in the ‘best street in Adelaide’
A new community hub in the CBD’s south promises coveted sourdough, Scandi furniture and a gallery space. The unlikely trio of business owners claim they’ve moved into the city’s best street.
Few spots in the CBD can offer a barista-style coffee, Danish furniture and a photo art gallery all in the same place.
Now, a warehouse at 100 Gilbert Street has been transformed into exactly that, with three unique businesses, Housewarmers, Idle Hands and Common Uncommon, joining forces to occupy the spot that used to house the skateboarding shop Daily Grind.
Owners of Danish furniture shop Housewarmers Ben Golotta and Lolly Heaney say it was a no-brainer to share the space.
“It’s just so expensive to run any business and rent anywhere, so lowering the risk for all of us is such a good outcome,” Ben says.
“It just makes so much sense to have any fresh business to share the load, we all get advertising between the three of us, so it just works perfectly.”
Ben and Lolly first opened Housewarmers in 2024 on Grenfell Street with Renew Adelaide before relocating to a store on Unley Road, which they’ve now left. They specialise in mid-century Scandinavian and Australian furniture.
Ben says their latest space on Gilbert Street in the city’s south end is on “the best street in Adelaide”.
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“It’s quaint and quiet and peaceful, but equally full of humans. It deserves to have more cafes and more life here.”
Lolly says the space had already proven to be mutually beneficial for all three businesses.
“What we’ve found is especially with the business of the café we’ve been able to leverage that, so we’ve actually already had in the short couple of weeks incidental sales from the café-goers,” she says.
Lewis McDonald runs the coffee shop, specialty sourdough bakery and soon-to-be wine bar Idle Hands alongside his sister Ella.
He says having multiple businesses sharing a collective space is “the future of a lot of hospitality venues”.
“None of the three of us could have ever accessed this space independently,” Lewis says.
“Having multiple people share the space, share the rent, share the bills, share everything, it suddenly becomes accessible.”
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Lewis has channelled two decades of hospitality industry experience – at hospo hot spots including Exchange Coffee and LOC Bottle Bar – into Idle Hands, adopting bits and pieces from everything he’s learned at home and abroad.
The coffee shop has only been open for two weeks so far, but Lewis says he has already seen a huge demand for their house specialty.
“People do crazy things for sourdough bread; they go mental for it,” he says.
Lewis says the business already sells between 240 and 260 of their sourdough cardamom buns a week, a Scandinavian breakfast staple, which he believes will continue to “bring people from far and wide”.
Tucked away in the back of the building is Common Uncommon, a studio space that will be used for exhibitions and workshops around still and moving photography.
The third piece of the business hub’s puzzle is Common Uncommon, and owner Alexander Robertson says he had the “idea for a while” to open a photography space alongside like-minded business owners, and the new space has been able to facilitate the dream.
“No one’s stepping on anyone else’s toes and it all functions together well. Rather than having competing businesses we get to all come together to share a space and interact in different ways,” Alex says.
He hopes the new space will foster a sense of community for visitors.
“Photography is such an accessible medium and an accessible art form to communicate with.
“My real aim is to be able to share people’s work and not have it held quietly through a traditional gallery sense — we can do it with a bit more DIY punk rather than having to be mainstream art.”
The businesses are based at 100 Gilbert Street, Adelaide and are open.
