“One of Melbourne’s finest examples of art deco architecture from the 1930s looks set to be knocked down to make way for an iconic new Apple Store,” Asher Moses reports for The Age. “Lonsdale House, on Lonsdale Street near Caledonian Lane, will be bulldozed to make way for a new CBD shopping centre as part of the redevelopment of Myer.”
“The shopping centre, which will be called Emporium Melbourne, has been given the green light by the Victorian State Government,” Moses reports.
“Darren Steinberg, head of property at developer Colonial Global Asset Management, confirmed that the company was in talks with Apple over the iPhone maker becoming the flagship tenant,” Moses reports. “An Apple store appeared as the hero store in the artist’s interpretation of the completed project, and Colonial has already leased retail space to Apple in Melbourne’s Chadstone and Sydney’s Chatswood Chase shopping centres.”
Robin Grow, president of the Art Deco & Modernism Society, vehemently opposes the development, which is scheduled to be completed by Christmas 2012 and will include 240 shops,” Moses reports. “Grow said Lonsdale House needed to be saved to preserve Melbourne’s cultural heritage… ‘[Lonsdale House] is not heritage listed on the state register but it was listed as grading B by the City of Melbourne on their planning scheme and it was part of the heritage overlay,’ Grow said. ‘Morally they [the council] had an obligation to protect the building … and they just rolled over and wouldn’t protect it.'”
Full article here.
