Image: Leonie Bourke
Authorities have launched an investigation in response to the demolition of an Irish pub with a heritage overlay earlier this month in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton.
The apparently illegal destruction of the Corkman Pub, which was built in the mid-1880s, has led to calls to force developers responsible to reconstruct the hotel in its original style.
The City of Melbourne and the Victorian State Government are pursuing a ruling from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) that would force the owners, Stefce Kutlesovski and Raman Shaqiri, to rebuild their pub.
Even if the VCAT doesn’t find in favour of the government, Kutlesovski and Shaqiri will find it difficult to profit from the Corkman’s demolition, as Victoria’s minister for planning Richard Wynnne has imposed a two-year planning control on the site requiring any new structure to conform to the former building’s size and scale.
According to a report in The Age, the demolition doubled the value of the site, from the $4.76 million paid this past August to an estimated $8–10 million today.
“We can’t get the original Carlton Inn back but we can support legal action to require restitution of the building and amendment of the planning scheme to put strict controls on any future development of the site,” Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said in a media release.
Wynne was also looking at possibilities for future action, saying fines needed to be a deterrent.
“While these cowboy developers thumbed their noses at Victoria’s building and planning laws, we are sending a clear message that willful and illegal destruction of our heritage will not be tolerated,” he said in a media release.
As Melbourne acts to protect its heritage from new development, housing prices in the city have hit a record high, with the September Domain House Price Report finding prices had grown at an annual rate of 9.1 per cent to reach a median cost of $773,669.
Observers attribute the high cost of housing to a range of factors — from overseas buyers to tax-structures that are too generous to investors — but also to insufficient new development.
Stephen Koukoulas, a fellow at think tank Per Capita, for instance, argued in The Guardian this week that, “Until very recently, Australia’s strong population growth fueled unrelenting growth in underlying demand for dwellings at a time when new building was not adding sufficiently to supply.
“This housing shortage, mixed with aggressive interest rate cuts and tax rules, underpinned strong house price gains,” Koukoulas wrote.
Whether the Corkman’s owners had intended to pursue new residential development — as many Melbournians suspect — or not, they appear to have changed their tune.
“We want to make absolutely clear that we will rebuild the building at our expense,” they wrote in a letter to the Victorian government and reported in The Age.
Demolishing the hotel, they said, was “the wrong course of action and has pitted us against the community, government decision makers and other stakeholders.”
