Melbourne's best known drag venue and gay pub, the 164-year-old Greyhound Hotel in St Kilda, is being demolished for apartments, after Planning Minister Richard Wynne refused to give it heritage protection.
The hotel closed late last year and an attempt by Port Phillip Council to have Mr Wynne add the building to the heritage list has failed.
Wreckers have begun dismantling the rear of the building.
The company that owns the hotel has an approved permit to knock it down entirely. It plans to build an eight-level apartment tower.
Related Content
Mr Wynne last week declined to give the pub heritage protection. It is owned by three people:Â Karina Harcourt, Chris van der Linden and Will van der Linden.
The general manager of the company knocking down the pub and re-developing the site, Shane Gardner, said the council had been very difficult to work with.
He said the council had made no objection to the plans to demolish the pub until a public campaign to stop it began.
"It was only when they got 2700 signatures that they said, 'Whoops we think we might have made a mistake!'Â But you can't close the gates once the horse has bolted."
Mr Gardner said the company had never considered keeping the pub's facade, because of the additional cost.
The pub's owners had asked Mr Wynne to hold off on an interim heritage protection order sought by Port Phillip Council.
The council had failed to apply for heritage protection in previous years, but over the past six months has lobbied for the pub's retention.
A spokesman for Mr Wynne said the hotel's owners had attempted to work with the council "on innovative ways that would keep the pub open, but got nowhere".
He said the council had known since last June that the pub was headed for demolition but had done nothing until it came under public pressure.
"Sadly it was a repeat performance of what we saw at the London Hotel," Mr Wynne's spokesman said.
The London was a 147-year-old hotel in Port Melbourne. It was knocked down last month with apartments to be built in its place.
Port Phillip mayor Bernadene Voss said it was frustrating that Mr Wynne had rejected the council's plea for heritage protection.
She said state government planning and heritage policies had too little regard for socially significant buildings like the Greyhound.
"The number of pubs being knocked down in inner Melbourne to make way for developments underlines the urgent need for clearer and stronger local heritage policy," she said.
Cr Voss called for change. "Let's not have the Greyhound die in vain," she said.
Another councillor, Dick Gross, criticised the planning minister in a Facebook post.
He said Mr Wynne had taken a "cowardly stance" by not saving the hotel, while simultaneously blaming Port Phillip for failing to stop the demolition.
The hotel was built in 1853 and remodelled in the 1930s. The alterations meant it could not be considered as an historic building but Port Phillip Council commissioned a report that confirmed its social significance to the community.
The council gaves its heritage assessment of the Greyhound site to Mr Wynne last month. It followed his refusal of its first request for interim heritage protection.
The report for the council by heritage consultants Context found the Greyhound had local historic and social significance.
It found the pub was "one of a few remaining buildings in Port Phillip which reflects the history of Victorian hotels generally but more locally charts the changing fortunes of St Kilda, and specifically the history of the Victorian [lesbian and gay] community".
In the 1980s the Greyhound morphed from a working man's boozer into a centre of drag-queen culture.
One performer, Amanda Monroe, told The Age last December that the Greyhound in its heyday was "the drag capital of Melbourne".
More than 2700 people have signed a petition opposing the plan to demolish the building for apartments.
The planning minister's office has been contacted for comment on the building's demolition.
32 comments
New User? Sign up