One of Victoria’s beloved pubs will become modern apartments – but the building will remain intact largely courtesy of the ground roots movement to save it.
Mentone’s Mentone Hotel – formerly the Edgewater Hotel and popularly known as ‘The Edgy’ – closed for good late last year as no operator could be found for the sizeable venue.
As developers circled, honing in on prime real estate around the country, the ‘Save the Edgy’ movement arose to spare the 1887 pub – the last of the historic hospitality structures on the Bayside strip, in Melbourne’s southern suburbs.
Heritage overlay was subsequently put in place on the building’s façade and internal staircase, but The Leader reports plans have been submitted to Kingston Council to construct 70 apartments around and behind the pub.
There will be an underground carparking, and a “food and beverage” offering on street level that could rescue some of the existing pub space from becoming dwellings.
“If we get someone, we’re going to cut the downstairs apartments out of the plan,” new owner and developer Paul Huggins’ told The Leader.
Save the Edgy spokesperson Chris Hill expressed that any reduction in the old pub space was regrettable.
“We want as much as possible of the existing building to be preserved,” he said.