Full steam ahead on Myer development
FLOODING and legal action will not stop progress at the Hobart Myer development site, with the next phase due to be finished in April, the developers say.
Completion of stage two of the $100 million Icon Complex, the Murray St part of the Myer store and other specialty shops, was scheduled for April, Kalis Group chief executive Alexia Kalis told the Mercury.
“The full development of the [Crowne Plaza] hotel will happen when the retail side finishes in April because we can’t do the two at the same time. Everything is going really well — actually we’re ahead of time,” she said.
Work resumed earlier this month on the much-anticipated $45 million Crowne Plaza, which was originally due to open next month after the InterContinental Hotels Group signed a management deal with the Kalis Group in 2015 to build the luxury hotel in the Icon Complex.
The progress of the hotel and the overall development had been delayed following the devastating flood in the basement level of the flagship Myer store, when walls holding back the Hobart Rivulet collapsed last year.
The collapse brought down walls and floors in shops in the Cat and Fiddle Arcade and sent millions of litres of water from the rivulet into the construction site, flooding large excavators and dozers.
In July, an InterContinental spokesman said the hotel would open in the first quarter of 2019.
As part of the resumption of work on stage two of the site, concrete pours for levels seven and eight of the 13-storey building began earlier this month and was on track to finish before the end of the month. Earlier this month in the Magistrates Court in Hobart, the developers pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the rivulet wall collapse.
E Kalis Properties was charged with one count of failure to notify adjoining owners of proposed building work and protection work, and one count of carrying out building work without protection work as agreed or determined.
The matter will go to a hearing around February next year.
It is expected to days. last four