The Polites Heritage Empire

PROFESSOR NORMAN ETHERINGTON AM

English actor and television presenter Tony Robinson, was astonished to find the name Polites on so many Adelaide buildings when he did a bubbly series of historical ‘Time Walks’ through Australian cities a few years ago. Was it, he wondered, a reminder to visitors to behave properly? No, he said, it was just the result of an Adelaide property developer wanting to put his name everywhere.

On this occasion Robinson’s historical imagination failed him.

The Polites story is a unique tale of historical mishaps, migration and hard work, and a family who took the road less travelled. Like the famed American investor, Warren Buffet, the Polites strategy was to ‘buy and hold’ good assets –not to ‘buy and flip’.

Run-of-the-mill property speculators load themselves up with debt to buy old buildings, demolish, build and sell. Others board up perfectly serviceable historic buildings, and then wait for rising land values and changes in planning rules to deliver windfall profits – all the time bleating that it’s not economic to keep them going.

The Polites marched to the beat of a different drummer, spending their own (not borrowed) money on buildings that would pay their own way. Affordable rents ensured they stayed occupied most of the time.

Those who know their Homer will recognise Polites as the ‘most devoted and loyal’ member of the crew that accompanied Odysseus on his fabled journey home from the Trojan War. In modern times, ancestors of the Adelaide Polites family occupied high administrative positions in the decaying Ottoman empire. Their tragedy was to find that Greeks were no longer wanted in an ethnically-minded new Turkey. Their own odyssey led Constantine Polities’ parents to Port Pirie in distant South Australia, where Con was born in 1919. As a young man, he tried his luck in Sydney before returning to Adelaide where he soon acquired a few buildings. Hesitating to put a migrant name on his fledgling company, he borrowed the moniker of a chic Double Bay restaurant, Princes, and set about building his property group. Within a few years, the younger members of the family convinced him to nail their true colours to the masthead.

With the passage of years, the name Polites has proliferated on Adelaide buildings. Some are state and local heritage places. Many others deserve to be but remain unprotected by any listing.

PICTURED

Not many glow, as they might with heritage colours and interior refitting. Most are painted a modest Greek white. But what matters to the National Trust is that they are still there. Most likely the Polites group looks after the biggest collection of heritage buildings in Australia. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for retaining them and proving in the most dramatic, practical way that old buildings can be made to pay. Next time you pass one tip your hat, not just out of politeness but respect.