A PROPOSAL for an 86-room floating hotel at Barrack Square has been given conditional approval by the City of Perth Council.
The $25 million development proposal, put forward by local operation PH3 Property Group, will now go before the Swan River Trust for final approval.
PH3 Property Group director Chris Hazebroek said the hotel would enhance the areas between the boatshed and the Shun Fung Restaurant at Barrack Square.
“We’ve got a sub-lease on that area and there’s been a development application in the past,” he said.
PH3 Property Group has only been involved in the development proposal for the past eight months.
The original development application was granted to hotel operator Country Lodging Australia.
“We came on late just before the development approval ran out and we took it over,” Mr Hazebroek said.
“What we’re trying to do is make more of the property project.
“We’ve re-jigged it and we’re now just trying to get the development approval through. We could have started [construction] before Christmas but we didn’t want to affect the other traders.”
The Perth City Council was one of 10 different stakeholders from whom PH3 Property Group had to seek approval
for the hotel project.
“The hotel site is part of the Perth City Council master plan for the riverside precinct,” Mr Hazebroek said.
“The actual development is trying to keep in sympathy with the whole area.”
The maximum height of the proposal is four levels and Mr Hazebroek said care had been taken not to overpower the existing buildings in the area.
“We feel it’s a big tourist destination and we want to make sure it’s done correctly,” he said. “It’s actually a nodal point of the city and with the future development in the area it will all link together and add a bit of vibrancy to the city.”
If the Swan River Trust grants the proposal approval, construction will start in January to meet a completion date of December 2004.
Mr Hazebroek said he was very confident of getting an approval from the Swan River Trust as the application was merely an extension of an existing development approval.
“We’ve got a lot of support from the traders at Barrack Square,” he said.
Perth City councillor Judy McEvoy said she felt that the Barrack Square development in its current form was an inadequate node.
“A hotel will be a wonderful extension of it,” Cr McEvoy said.
“At the end of the day we get criticised for not having something there; I think it’s important to get this up and running.”
