When Carlton's 159-year-old Corkman Irish Pub was illegally demolished last October, plenty saw disaster.
For Joseph Chahin, who drank at the pub while a law student at Melbourne University, its unlawful destruction was sad. But he also saw an opportunity – to buy it and rebuild.
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State to sue Corkman Irish pub owners
The 159-year-old Carlton pub will have to be rebuilt, says Planning Minister Richard Wynne.
Mr Chahin has made a handsome living from development, with many of his projects featuring a top-end hospitality venue.
His latest is revamping Brunswick's Bridie O'Reilly's – another pub he drank at during university – as the Sarah Sands Hotel.
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He settled on the Brunswick pub last March for $6 million. It shuts in April, after which his company, Peregrine Projects, will restore the 1854 pub and build around 40 apartments above it.
His attempts to buy Carlton's Corkman site from the owners that knocked it down last year without permission came to nothing, after weeks of legal wrangling.
Mr Chahin won't say what he offered the pair, although he implies it was around the $5 million the current owners paid for it in 2015.
Not true, said Raman Shaqiri, one of the co-owners of the site and the man whose demolition company illegally pulled down the pub then dumped the waste – including asbestos – on a site he and partner Stefce Kutlesovski own in Cairnlea.
Mr Shaqiri insisted Mr Chahin offered them $7.3 million for the site – a $2.5 million profit.
"But we were never interested in selling," Mr Shaqiri said.
Mr Shaqiri and Mr Kutlesovski are in the state planning tribunal next month, facing action from Planning Minister Richard Wynne who wants them to rebuild the pub.
The minister has already changed the laws for the site, to allow only a two-storey building on it.
Mr Chahin said he offered the pair nowhere near $7.3 million for the site.
He said he, like many others, had been angered by the brazen destruction of the cherished Carlton pub, that was as welcoming to cash-strapped students as it was their professors. "I thought it was appalling that individuals perceived they would be allowed to get away with those sorts of actions."
His wanted to rebuild the Corkman and own the hospitality venue for at least a decade. "I was there 22 years ago, drinking. To think that, decades later, [I could be] there as the custodian protecting the history not only for the public but for students was [appealing]," Mr Chahin said.
But with negotiations having broken down between Mr Chahin and the Carlton site's owners, he's now focusing on Brunswick.
He believes the Irish pub, which has stood at the corner of Sydney and Brunswick roads for 163 years, "is now well known for the wrong reasons", and that will be turned around when it is redeveloped.
"Once you remove the Irish theming from it, you're left with the residual bones of a pub with an amazing presence in Brunswick," he said. "I want to bring the Sarah Sands back to life. Owners like me are just a custodian and a chapter in the life of a pub like that."