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One of the first things visitors to Joel and Cassie Testa’s downtown Akron penthouse notice is the shiny black dining room table for 12, a custom conversation piece often mistaken for a real grand piano. Joel explains it actually doubles as a high-tech player piano that also plays music via an iPod connected to a jack and built-in speakers. He then lifts the piano keyboard cover to reveal an electronic keyboard he stores in it.
“The space is one that you would typically want to see a grand piano in,” says the 47-year-old president and chief operating officer of Northside Lofts developer Testa Cos. “In a loft, you want to conserve space — you’re normally downsizing — so I wanted something that could function as a dining room table, that could function as a desk.”
It’s just one of the many innovative ways the Testas have made living in a six-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath Northside Loft luxurious and a practical fit for their family of five.
The couple sold their Northampton Township home and moved in three years ago. Along with 13-year-old Zoe and 10-year-old Giovanni, Joel’s children from a previous marriage, they spent several weekends trying out Northside Lofts models while they headed downtown to bike the Towpath Trail, ice skate at Lock 3 and visit the Akron Art Museum.
“We finally decided, Let’s go all in. Let’s give up the safety net, let’s design and build out a unit we’re not putting on the market,” Joel says.
The 4,571-square-foot interior was little more than a concrete shell when the Testas arrived. After more than three years of renovating and building it out, it’s now an urban showplace with a carved-from-a-warehouse aesthetic and postcard-perfect views of Akron.
The Testas painted most of the drywall white and floored the entire place in a vinyl plank that mimics the look of hickory. A cantilevered black steel linear fireplace with a black steel television cabinet hovering over it provides delineation between the great room and the piano dining table.
The kitchen is outfitted with cabinetry painted matte dark gray, quartz countertops and a lighted black-painted glass backsplash. A white 12-foot island with 10 stools is the family’s go-to noshing spot.
“Every meal we eat as a family, unless it’s outside, is here,” Joel says. Furniture on a nearby balcony accommodates alfresco meals.
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
Tylar Sutton
A floating aluminum-and-wood staircase rises to an indoor second-floor media room in the middle of a massive multilevel rooftop deck, the bulk of the loft’s 6,500-plus-square-foot outdoor-living space. The couple leads the way from an outdoor kitchen, bar and seating area around a fire pit through a garden where herbs and vegetables grow in planters to an outdoor living room. A few steps lead to a private outdoor theater with a drop-down screen, projector and speakers — the perfect place for family movie night under the stars.
The Testas furnished the indoor rooms in black, white and various shades of gray. “[Joel’s] favorite color is black,” Cassie says. One of the few exceptions is a dusty purple bench in the first-floor master suite that complements purple undertones of gray woven fabric on the bed’s towering tufted headboard and upholstered frame. Like the children’s rooms across the hall, the suite opens onto a wraparound balcony. Joel demonstrates how five glass panels slide to one side and stack to make the master bedroom and balcony one. An EcoSmart fireplace built into a wheeled laminate cabinet keeps the couple warm on cool nights. It burns denatured ethanol, which Joel describes as a cleaner process that yields carbon dioxide and steam.
When the couple learned Cassie was pregnant last year, they took over part of a neighboring penthouse to add a downstairs gym and upstairs bedroom for Zoe so the teen’s old first-floor digs could be turned into a nursery for baby Sofia. That nursery won’t be used much. The Testas are having a house built in Silver Lake, near Joel’s parents, and putting the penthouse up for sale in the spring. While they are looking forward to more family time, they will miss the loft and all the work they put into making it their own.
“We hate to leave this place,” he admits. “We absolutely love it — it’s so much about who we are. But my parents will only be here for so long.”
Now another family can experience this contemporary and practical piece of downtown living.
Closer Look
Joel and Cassie Testa’s great room accent wall looks like a building exterior emblazoned with a faded advertisement for a long-gone hotel. A contractor created the look and feel of brick by applying individual inch-thick brick veneers to the drywall and filling in the joints with mortar.
“I played around with some different techniques, sponge painting and ragging,” Joel says of the weathered white paint job.
The pseudo advertisement is the logo for Joel and Cassie’s favorite Manhattan hotel. Joel re-created the logo on his laptop, then projected it onto the wall, traced it and painted it black.
Tylar Sutton
