Lack of garden area could derail Hotel Indigo plans

A PROPOSED five-storey hotel in Torquay could hit a potentially derailing obstacle during a Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) meeting to be held this week.

The Surf Coast Shire council rejected the planning application for the 128-room Hotel Indigo at 2-4 Geelong Road and 48 Bell Street in May last year, citing 11 separate reasons for their rejection.

The proponents responded by appealing to VCAT to overturn the ruling.

3228 Local Residential Association president Andrew Cherubin said the point of law the council would debate today (Thursday, February 27) and tomorrow (Friday, February 28) was about the proportion of garden area on the residential component of the site.

“The proposal crosses several blocks, and the corner block which is the car wash at the moment is a commercial site, while the vacant land just to the north of that is the residential site.

“On residential sites, there is a requirement of 35 per cent garden space (for sites of a certain size).”

“A major question is ‘should the entire project be considered in terms of area, or just the part of the project that’s on the residential area?’.”

If it is the former, then the existing proposal is falls well short of this required percentage.

Mr Cherubin said if the ruling went against the developers, “they will have to go back to the drawing board”.

Conversely, if the ruling falls in favour of Hotel Indigo, then a full six-day merits hearing will be held on November 10. The first three days would be held in Geelong to make it easier for interested locals to attend.

The merits hearing would see a broader range of topics discussed about the of the hotel and whether it would be beneficial to the region.

This was the original purpose of this week’s hearing, but it was deemed the point of law surrounding the garden area should be clarified before any further steps were taken.

Mr Cherubin said he expected much of the debate would surround the definition of “medium density housing” and whether the hotel fitted this definition.

“There’s a couple of exceptions to that, and one of them is the wording ‘medium density housing’. The developer is saying they’re medium density housing so they may be exempt from the requirement.

“The council’s argument, I believe, is that the hotel is not medium density housing, it falls under residential but not under medium density. It is a very technical point.”