Perth Voice Interactive

YOUNG architects, urban planners and hobby historians are banding together to campaign for the old Savoy Hotel to be reopened.

Now 100 years old, the federation free classical building was designed by famed architect John Talbot Hobbs, a Great War officer known for anachronistic kindness towards his men in an era of callous commanders.

On its opening the hotel was the talk of the town. Newspapers wrote articles about gatherings there, describing every last detail down to the colour of ladies’ frocks. In 1916 the grand building was described as “The Ritz of Australia”.

But in the late 1980s the place was closed, and in 2009 it was sold to a Singaporean investment firm.

For years its reopening has looked like a forlorn hope, with the assumption being the owners could make more money from just having the ground floor occupied by a shoestore than they’d make with an entire five-storey hotel.

Only in recent weeks have owners Starhill Global Reit contacted Perth city council to start early investigations into reopening the building. But it’ll be an expensive project if they go ahead, with a battle between modern building codes and a century-old structure.

Recently-elected Perth councillor Reece Harley has been looking into getting it reopened for about four years now. He says it’s “one of the most beautiful buildings but sadly it’s been empty above ground floor for four decades”.

The folk from the Perth Urbanist town planning ideas collective are leading the campaign to encourage Starhill to restore the building to a grand old-timey boutique hotel.

Stewart Doran says they want to encourage the owners to spend the full amount to make it grand again and not go for the budget option. Cheap hotels spend about $200,000 a room. The Savoy could take $450,000 to restore it to full grandeur.

While heritage buildings have often been the domain of greybeards, the average age of the group hovers somewhere in the Xbox generation.

“There is a groundswell of support for the Savoy Hotel to be brought back to life, particularly from a generation of younger Perth people who respect and admire our city’s history,” Cr Harley says.

Urbanist Matt Rogers says it feels like they’ve “got a nostalgia for something they never really experienced.

“We tend to make a lot of glass and steel buildings [today] that don’t have that emotional component.”

To show the owners that Perth has a lot of love for this building, they’re hoping people contribute memories and histories of the hotel, along with ideas for its future. Once it’s compiled, they’ll send it off to Singapore and implore the owners to get underway.

Federal Perth Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan recalls working in the bar slinging beers back in the ‘70s and says it would be fantastic to see it reopen: “I used to work there… it was in the days when bar staff were barmaids,” she says.

“Back in the early 1970s, members of the vice squad used to come in and drink ponies.” The smaller pony beer glasses—140ml—didn’t go warm before you could drink them like a larger schooner.

“It had a city crowd that drank there, and my recollection was that in the bar it was mainly a male preserve and there were a lot of coppers and a lot of ex-coppers.

“Back in the 1970s it wasn’t genteel, it was still very much used as a hotel and in fact a lot of country people had been coming there for generations.”

Cr Harley says “I’m looking forward to the days when the people of Perth will once again be able to use the line ‘I’ll meet you at the Savoy’”.

To contribute stories or ideas for the project, head to http://www.perthurbanist.com/savoy

by DAVID BELL