ApartmentsChris ThomsonWed 20 May 26
Stagnant Site Finds its Mojo in Groovy Core of North Fremantle
A development application has finally been filed for a main-street block that for 40 years has laid dormant on the hippest strip of affluent North Fremantle.
GJJ Property’s three-storey mixed-use project aims to consolidate a 1518sq m block at 220 Queen Victoria Street and a 585sq m lot at 6 Burns Street.
The development has been designed by Matthew Crawford Architects, which occupies a 1980s-built office at 6 Burns Street that would be demolished under the proposal.
The project comprises three retail premises (totalling 396sq m) and two offices (totalling 165sq m) on the ground floor, six “boutique” apartments across the top two levels, 34 at-grade parking bays and 14 bicycle spaces.
Queen Victoria Street is North Fremantle’s main drag. Across it from the planned development is Mojo’s Bar which, since it opened as The Stoned Crow in the 1970s, has been an internationally significant hub of rock and pop music.
Among hundreds of acts to have played the small venue are WA-grown John Butler, The Triffids, Jebediah, Tame Impala, San Cisco, Abbe May and the Farriss Brothers (that morphed into INXS). Also to have plugged in there were The Valentines, the pre-AC/DC band of Bon Scott, who grew up at North Fremantle and whose ashes at Fremantle Cemetery have since 2005 been classified by the National Trust.
Lead consultant for the mixed use development, Russell Smail of Lime Street Projects, said that like the project architects, his firm had leased an office at 6 Burns Street and got to know the owners of it and the Queen Victoria Street site.
“I’d been trying to convince them for the best part of 10 years to sell it to me,” Smail told The Urban Developer.
“The last five years, I’d ring them every six months and say, ‘hey’ and they would go, ‘not a chance, no’.
“And then, ... about a year ago, I rang [them] up and ... [they] said to me, ‘make us an offer’ and I nearly fell off my chair.”
GJJ Property is directed by Perth-based Gary Johnson and Shannon Bell and at the time the plans were lodged the two were buying the blocks from Vermont Nominees P/L. Vermont is in turn owned by North Fremantle-based David Morrison and former City of Subiaco councillor Graham Cerini.
Since the late-1980s when a service station on the Queen Victoria Street block was demolished, the site in the town centre of historic North Fremantle has been vacant.
“ At one stage [the current owners] came very close to putting an IGA [supermarket] on it, which would have been really good ... but they just couldn’t arrange numbers and the like and the site is pretty tight for car parking,” Smail said.
“Unfortunately, the local structure plan is very limiting, hence why [the sites have] not beeen developed ... and also there’s this little heritage precinct [here] as well.
“But we’ve worked with the planners [and] we’re pushing for an additional storey because it’s meant to be only limited to two stories ... but we’ve also then set it back off the frontage so ... that scale is not really read from the street.”
On a peninsula bound by the Indian Ocean to the west and the Swan River to the south and east, long-gentrified North Fremantle was an independent town from 1895 to 1961, when it merged with the City of Fremantle. Due to its location north of the Swan, the suburb is the only part of Fremantle in Perth’s exclusive western suburbs.
The development site is surrounded by heritage-listed buildings from the suburb’s formative working class era, including the former Weeties breakfast cereal factory, a venerated Fremantle landmark.
City staff are considering the development application ahead of making a recommendation to Western Australia’s inner metro development assessment panel.
“There’s always going to be some objections,” Smail said.
“But I think ... people are relieved that it’s finally being done because it’s left a little bit of a scar visually on North Fremantle for the past 40 years.”
