Palace hotel owners and the project developers, sisters Esther La Rovere and Selina La Rovere-Nagas, explained they want to be responsive to the community with the proposed hotel development.
The concept drawings submitted to the Broken Hill City Council were to start the conversation about the height of the proposed building and its use and to make sure the building design will work for the operational aspects of the project, explained Mrs La Rovere-Nagas.
“We need to ensure the hotel can be built to the set budget,” Ms La Rovere said.
The hotel’s use is for 38-bed accommodation, and the top floor will be a function space that can be hired, it will not be a hotel with a public bar, explained Ms La Rovere.
The project’s managers have been meeting with the heritage advisor, Elizabeth Vine, to create a hotel that fits in with heritage-listed buildings of Argent Street and appointed a Heritage-specific architect to the project.
The breeze brick façade on the initial concept drawings was more about a representation of a screening option.
As the project was further developed and after feedback from the Heritage consultant, Elizabeth Vine, changes have been made to the Argent St façade to offer a more dynamic frontage.
The changes to the front of the proposed hotel building will soften the façade from the original breeze brick concept design and will align more with the neighbouring buildings, explained Mrs Rovere-Nagas.
The changes made to the initial concept designs are subtle and significant and ensure the building is sympathetic to the streetscape of Argent Street.
The first significant change is a dropped roofline that will align with the neighbouring Elders Insurance building’s roofline, recessed curved sides, and textural changes that are all congenial with other Argent Street properties.
“We are proposing a ten-square metered side wall with a mural,” said Ms Rovere-Nagas.
The hotel’s name and the mural shown on the supplied image are concepts only and not the finalised mural.
Instead of a permanent breeze brick wall, the first and second floors above the awning over the ground floor will have sliding screens and a fixed balustrade bound by a decorative panel. They are looking at designs with similar detail to the fretwork on the Palace Hotel. The attached image only shows some of the pattern ideas on
these panels but will likely be on all the front panels.
“The fretwork detail will have its own pattern and will be along the federation line similar to the Palace Hotel’s fretwork,” Mrs Rovere-Nagas said.
The front façade will have fixed balustrades with attached sliding panels, creating a dynamic, changeable feature.
The internal lightwell atrium is a feature that should be celebrated.
The current building on the site only has one stone wall that is considered historically significant.
The project managers plan to rework and reuse this wall in the development.
Ms Esther La Rovere explained the best way for community consultation to happen about the main streetscape is at the Broken Hill City Council (BHCC) forums on the BHCC Central Business District (CBD) Masterplan.
From the outset, the hotel project has considered the CBD masterplan in the design of the project and has been attending meetings to gauge Council and community feedback throughout the development process, said Ms La Rovere.
One of the objectives of the CBD masterplan is to avoid any reduction in car parking in the CBD, the hotel project incorporated off street carparking spaces in its design.
Landscape Architects’ Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL) has been working with the BHCC to formulate a masterplan to improve the CBD’s amenities.
The proposed hotel development is trying to fit in with the retail and cultural precincts in the BHCC CBD Masterplan.
Local residents can comment on the CBD masterplan on the Council’s website.
The new designs will be submitted to BHCC as part of the development application when they are finalised.
