Row over London Hotel
The future of the historic London Hotel located in Port Melbourne is under a cloud – because the local council can’t make up its mind what to do.
Port Phillip Council had issued a demolition permit for the pub. The council’s planning officers had decided the venue was simply not worth saving.
“Based on this assessment, council will not request the Minister for Planning apply for an interim heritage overlay,’’ read their report. It said the building was “not considered to meet the threshold of local significance that would warrant application of a heritage overlay".
It seems some of the councillors took issue with the planning bureaucracy and Port Phillip Mayor asked Planning Minister Richard Wynne to place an interim order to stop the place getting knocked down.
This would have pleased the Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society which has been campaigning to save the pub.
But the Minister is not intervening. He says the interim heritage protection is only extended to state significant buildings and for all intents and purposes, the council had said this was not the case.
The local MP Labor's Martin Foley is not impressed, and he reckons all the council is doing is trying to pass the hot potato of a controversial decision over to the state government.
It’s a big issue for the owner Middle Park resident Gary Busuttil whose company bought the hotel three years ago for $4.07 million.
Attending a meeting of the council on Tuesday, representatives from his company had told the council that Busuttil had completed several checks with the council, Heritage Victoria and the National Trust before he bought it.
Councillors were told the company would be destroyed if the project did not go ahead.
Dane Morrissy, a member of the Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society said the hotel was worth saving because of its history.
"World wars have come and gone, and immigrants - by the millions - have come and gone past it. It's the first pub that people see when they arrive by sea. Most new arrivals … came to this pub, it's the first one they went to for a quenching ale," Morrisey told The Age.
With the minister refusing to step in, the council has put the project on hold to do a more detailed heritage assessment of the venue.
by Leon Gettler, May 26th 2016
