FREMANTLE mayor Brad Pettitt’s hopes for a lift in inner-city living gets a boost this weekend as developer Yolk launches sales for its seven-storey redevelopment of the old Spotlight store.

The Adelaide Street property was empty for almost a decade, and there’s been a couple of failed attempts to get a development approved; Yolk took a couple of goes and had to knock off a proposed eighth storey before it got passed by the state development panel.

• The old Spotlight store is set to become a 7-storey apartment tower while grungy Westgate Mall gets new life as Little Lane. Image
supplied

It’s now proposing a mix of 70 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments above a “cafe-retail hotspot”.

Yolk director Pete Adams said it was an iconic location with many memories for locals.

“It’s exciting to bring this once-popular spot back to life after decades of disrepair and underutilisation,” Mr Adams said. “The project is perfectly poised to take full advantage of the redeveloped Fremantle, with its vibrant new city centre — there has never been a more exciting time to be a Fremantle resident or to join the community there.”

• The old Westgate Mall in 1968. Image courtesy Fremantle City Library History Centre

The mall was created during an earlier attempt to boost Fremantle retail sector and was opened by then-premier Sir Charles Court in 1965. Its anchor tenants were Coles, Bairds and Walsh’s, but Myer’s arrival in town signified a shift in focus to Kings Square and the centre gradually declined.