Fight over late night drinks in Cottesloe
The owners of the Cottesloe Beach Hotel have a problem.
They want to keep serving drinks at the pub’s open-air Beach Club after 10pm. They say the customers are demanding it and are getting frustrated by the early closing times.
As a result, the hotel has applied to the Department of Racing, Gaming and Liquor seeking to operate the Beach Club until 11pm Sundays to Tuesdays and until midnight Wednesdays to Saturdays.
The Cott, as its known locally, was put through a two-year, $6 million renovation by the Prendiville Group so there’s a lot that’s invested there.
The refurbishment, which started in December 2012, turned the pub’s once raucous beer garden into the now salubrious and hip spot, The Beach Club.
Prendiville Group hotel division chief executive Tony Dichiera said the trading hours were a throw- back to the days of the original beer garden. The Beach Club simply inherited them.
According to Dichiera, the restrictions stop the hotel from meeting the needs and demands of locals and international tourists.
To put it bluntly, they want something more classy than what was on offer in the beer garden when the pub was the home of Perth’s wildest “Sunday sesh.”
“Having to inform guests at 9.30pm to vacate the venue by 10pm is seriously out of step with today’s hospitality culture and expectations,” Mr Dichiera told the West Australian.
“For locals and tourists not to be able to sit down for a quality meal and drinks after 9.30pm seems ridiculous.”
So ridiculous in fact, that The Beach Club is out of step with the rest of the state.
As Dichiera puts it, extending the trading hours simply bring the venue in line with the normal permitted hours for hotel licences in WA.
The hotel has had other problems. For example, residents have complained about the noise coming from the Beach Club.
Work was done on the acoustics but residents said that was not sufficient.
And so their complaints were upheld by the Director of Liquor Licensing, only to be dismissed on appeal by the Liquor Commission.
So the application for extended drinking hours is part of a broader story.
by Leon Gettler, September 9th 2016
