Caretaker of a joint, refurbished, next to river (7)
I believe the answer is:
janitor
'caretaker' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'a joint refurbished next to river' is the wordplay.
'refurbished' indicates an anagram.
'next to' says to put letters next to each other.
'river' becomes 'r'.
'a'+'joint'='ajoint'
'ajoint' is an anagram of 'janito'.
'janito'+'r'='JANITOR'
'of' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for janitor that I've seen before include "One employed to clean and maintain a building" , "Person looking after building" , "(In Scotland) school caretaker" , "Caretaker or doorkeeper" , "Caretaker (mainly US)" .)