It came as a shock as the Council’s own Planning Department had recommended the application be refused.
In a heated meeting at Town Hall, representatives of the proposed W-Hotel development were hissed at by live music supporters.
The Age quoted Daniella Tonetta, sales and marketing manager at Starwood Hotel group, as telling the meeting that the local music scene “fits perfectly” with the hotel’s “DNA”. She added, “We want to create a neighbourhood…we invite the local community to be a part of the hotel.”
The Save The Palace Facebook campaign, which has almost 36,000 supporters, was not impressed with the deferment.
It said the delay would “(allow) the developers more time to adjust their designs to be more sympathetic to heritage concerns. Ultimately the developers case for deferment appeared flawed to us and we found no real justification for this deferment. Tuesday July 1 was apparently a date that they’d been working towards to present their case.”
