MINING billionaire Andrew Forrest’s company Fiveight has been given approval to build a  six-storey hotel on the former Spicers site in Fremantle. 

The state-controlled Joint Development Assessment Panel conditionally approved Fiveight’s application last Friday.

The $35 million project will feature 117 rooms, basement parking, shops, and a rooftop terrace with a swimming pool. 

Fiveight head John Meredith said “the approved proposal will transform the well-known site into a destination hotel designed to sit comfortably alongside Fremantle’s historic architecture and existing public spaces”. 

The Fremantle Society fears the hotel will dominate the historic limestone Warders Cottages across Henderson Street, but DesignFreo chair Pippa Hurst has endorsed the development. 

“This is exactly the kind of quality architecture we should be demanding in our city,” Ms Hurst said.

“It is so much better than a glass and aluminium-clad box. 

“Once complete, it will feel like it has always been there and will set a design standard.” 

Society president John Dowson said the JDAP “gave the developer everything he asked for”.

“The premise of the hotel was based on a [false assumption] that because 50 years ago there was a building on the site of four storeys with a 20-metre frontage, that somehow allows today a six-storey building to cover the whole site, totally omitting to mention that most of the site originally had two- and one-storey structures.

“It is no wonder that JDAPs are detested in every suburb of Perth for the damage they are doing.“

Construction is set to start in 2023.

by GEORGIA BUSSLINGER