Freo pushes back on Fiveight’s Spicers project

The City of Fremantle is pushing for Fiveight to revise its project on the former Spicers building due to height and heritage concerns.

Andrew Forrest-led Fiveight is proposing to redevelop the historic building on 10 Henderson Street into six-storey hotel comprising 117 rooms, a ground floor lobby, a restaurant and small bar.

The estimated $35 million project will be considered by the Metro Inner-South Joint Development Assessment Panel next week.

However, the city’s planning committee, which consists of about half of the council, voted at its meeting last week to recommend the JDAP defer on a decision and for the applicant to modify the design.

The committee’s decision was against the city’s own planning staff recommending conditional approval for the project.

According to the city’s responsible authority report, the council was not prepared to support the proposal.

“The proposed additional height will dominate and overshadow the existing environment without providing any additional benefit,” the report said.

“The additional height, if required, should be accommodated within the site where it does not impact on streetscapes.

“Council is not willing to support a decision that will result in the repetition of a built form that is clearly a poor outcome, and arguably a mistake.”

The council has recommended the applicant reduce the proposed height to the 14 metres limit in the local planning scheme and for fine grained façade elements to be used.

The report said the heritage facade treatments proposed by the applicant did not pay tribute to the adjoining Warders Cottage on Henderson Street.

“Council is broadly supportive of the submitted proposal for the site in terms of land uses and particularly supports the way in which the proposal activates the streets and creates new linkages,” the report said.

“However, the facade treatments for the building are not an appropriate response to the context - the additional height will dominate the narrow urban streets and the large round columns are better suited to a highway than a fine grained, pedestrian environment.”

The development application, prepared by Urbis with designs by Smart Design Studio, said the proposed development would bring value to the Fremantle city centre.

“The proposal also unlocks a site that has previously been underdeveloped for half a decade, establishing amenity and activity to further Fremantle’s cultural fabric,” the application said.

Fiveight acquired the 2,834 square metre site from Sirona Urban in 2018.

The Spicers stationary company building was on the site until its demolition in the 1970s.

The site currently contains a public car park and a warehouse on the site was recently demolished to make way for temporary parking bays for the project.