An ancient Venice enclave turns from glassmaking to tourism

MURANO, Italy — The quiet of this lagoon island a short boat ride from Venice has been broken intermittently in recent months by earsplitting saws and the low grumble of heavy machinery.

A wing of a late 19th-century brick factory built by the Societa Veneziana Conterie e Cristallerie, once one of the largest bead and glass factories on the island of Murano, is being transformed into a 130-room deluxe hotel that is expected to open in summer 2012.

At the height of production in the 1920s and early 1930s, when the Conterie's beads were wildly popular in clothing and design around the world, the factory employed as many as 1,000 people, with 4,000 more working on contract. But it closed in 1992, a victim of changing tastes and a rapidly globalizing economy.

The hotel has claimed one former Conterie structure; another is to become an annex of the island's glass museum, if money for the project can be found.

Off a nearby canal, work is under way on another former glass factory destined to join the top-end Kempinski Hotels chain when it opens, expected in 2013. Its 150 rooms and suites are to include a sun terrace, a spa and fitness center and a ballroom, as well as meeting and convention spaces.

Another, smaller hotel in an abandoned glassworks is still on the drawing board.

The new hotels reflect a radical change in the self-image of an island, whose history has been inextricably linked to glassmaking since 1291, when Venice moved its glass furnaces to this site, which it considered a safe distance away from the main islands. But rising costs and competition have decimated Murano's traditional way of life, and the island is being forced to imagine a future beyond glass.

In the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s, boats weighted down with glass products — miniature animal families, glassware and vases, delicate rococo chandeliers made of hundreds of pieces — set sail from here to satisfy insatiable foreign markets.

Then, most of Murano's inhabitants, who today number about 4,600, were involved in one aspect of glassmaking or another. Local boys would begin working in the furnaces before they turned 10 and spend a lifetime honing their skills.

Things are different today. In little less than a decade, about a third of Murano's glassmakers — many of whom have linages dating back centuries — have shut down or have had to cut back drastically. The industry's work force has dropped from 6,000 employees in 1970 to about 900 today, according to Gianfranco Albertini, president of the Promovetro Consortium, which manages a trademark for original Murano glass.

Official industry figures for annual revenue from artistic glass do not exist but can be estimated to hover around 150 million euros, or $217 million, according to Gianni De Checchi, secretary of the Confartigianato di Venezia, a trade group for artisans. Ten years ago it was 200 million euros, he said, with profit margins worn away by rising production costs — especially the cost of energy and transportation — as well as labor costs. Lower-quality products emerging ever faster from China and Eastern Europe have also made a considerable dent in Murano's global glass market.

"There's been a massacre of companies," said Gianluca Vecchi, chairman of Andromeda, a chandelier and lighting factory that he said was facing a bumpy patch. "Too many things have happened in too short a time," and now "there are no more tears to cry."

A truly insular island

In many ways, the island has mapped its own decline.

Murano's current situation "is typical of what happened to other industrial districts in Italy in the past 10 years," said Stefano Micelli, a professor of innovation technology at Ca'Foscari University in Venice and dean of Venice International University.

Comfortable after years of prosperity, many Murano companies did not look beyond their fiery furnaces and failed to evolve toward a more industrial and managerial model, he said.

"Instead of selling vases to tourists, they should have thought of ways to look to the future," he said.

That future is now focused on tourism. Proximity to Venice had already built a fledgling tourism industry, and in a few short years glass shops catering to day-trippers have colonized waterfront palazzo sites, muscling out residents and traditional retail stores.

But Murano is notoriously insular, and previously it has dispensed its hospitality in small doses. It has two hotels and a handful of bed-and-breakfasts that can accommodate a total of 72 guests. There is not much nightlife. Once the factories shut their doors, so does the island.

The influx of new hotels will change that, or so investors believe.

"If Murano becomes another base for tourism, as we hope will happen, then the city will live again, it will be revitalized around the clock," said Francesco Paternostro, managing director of Lagare, the Milan real estate development group behind the hotel in the former Conterie factory.

The group chose to invest in Murano, he said, because demand for rooms remained high in the lagoon and because it was cheaper than developing in Venice. He is certain that Murano's characteristic charm holds its own allure. "People will start going to Venice for the day" and not the other way around, he said.

The prospect that China and other developing countries will send millions of tourists abroad, flush with new wealth, is also pushing the change. Venice is already so packed, "one can barely walk around the streets anymore," said Guido Ferro, whose company has been dabbling in the hotel business here after centuries spent in glass furnaces. "Murano has to transform itself — within limits, of course."

Changes are also on the way under a citywide urban development project, the so-called Urban Structure Plan, or PAT in Italian, which is under discussion in City Hall. It is a broad and fairly contentious rezoning plan that will shape Venice in the coming decades.

In Murano, administratively a district of Venice, discussion has centered on the "Sacca San Mattia," a 17-acre plot of abandoned land that is to be reconverted to industrial and artisanal use. Sacca refers to land that has emerged from the lagoon.

Murano's officials envision transporting some glass factories from the center to this northwestern spot. In Sacca San Mattia, modern glassworks could be built according to more technologically advanced and environmentally friendly criteria alongside other "lagoon-friendly industries," like boat building, said Erminio Viero, the president of the Murano Municipality, who noted that ideas were still mostly at an embryonic stage.

In turn, the vacated buildings in the center could be developed for low-cost housing, which is in perennially short supply. "A lot of young people leave because they can't afford to live" in Murano, Viero said.

Local council members hope the changes will bring other investments.

"The idea is that Murano won't live just off glass, but that new sources of employment will be found," said Massimiliano Smerghetto, Murano's council member for culture, sport and youth activities. "We have to work on various axes; the island's culture, which is tied to glass, new economic energies, and urban development."

Underwater subway?

The citywide plan also calls for the development of new transportation lines, most controversially an underwater subway that would carry travelers arriving by air to Murano and then Venice, making the island a potential pit stop for air passengers, more than nine million of whom arrived in 2010.

Opposition to the subway remains lively, though most Murano residents complain about infrequent and slow transportation to the mainland, which has contributed to the island's geographic insularity.

"We need rapid transport," said Lorenzo Giordani, who began courting tourist stomachs four years ago when he opened Alla Vecchia Pescheria, a stylish restaurant just off the Fondamenta Dei Vetrai where the decor is as studied as the menu. Giordani's family is in the glass business, "but I wanted to launch something new," he said. The restaurant is open daily for lunch but demand at night is slow, so it is open two nights a week in winter, four in summer.

While he is looking forward to the traffic the new hotels will bring, Giordani acknowledged that the island's sleepy pace had been a significant calling card. "Murano is beautiful because it is what it is," he said.

De Checchi, of Confartigianato, believes that tourism will be good for an island that has depended on an industrial monoculture for more than 700 years. "As long as that reality allows Murano to preserve its history," he said.

Despite the shift toward tourism, for some, Murano "is glass and will always be nothing other than glass," said Renata Ferrara, who designs delicate and elaborate custom jewelry with handmade beads.

And regardless of the island's future development, glass will still be part of it, Ferro said.

"People come to Murano," he said, "because they want to see the furnaces."