The Block 2018: Channel 9 starts transformation of Gatwick Hotel hellhole

THE Gatwick Hotel has long been Melbourne’s most notorious flophouse, but that’s about to change as work on transforming it for the next season of The Block begins.

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CHANNEL 9’s transformation of St Kilda’s most notorious flophouse has started.

And the Gatwick Hotel’s closure is bringing Fitzroy St back to life, police say.

The next season of hit reality TV series The Block will see the grungy Gatwick rooming house, site of countless stabbings, drug deaths and murders, worked over into luxury apartments.

As five restored period homes in Elsternwick went under the hammer on Saturday to close the latest season, preliminary works were already underway at next year’s Fitzroy St site.

Plans lodged with Port Phillip Council show the dilapidated former halfway house — also the scene of countless drug deals, assaults and rapes and temporary home to a slew of sketchy characters over the years — will be converted into eight luxury apartments.

Workers get stuck in on the infamous site yesterday. Picture: Penny Stephens

Loch St has been closed as the scaffolding goes up on the Gatwick Hotel in Fitzroy St. Picture: Penny Stephens

Police were constantly called to the Gatwick to deal with crimes committed there. Picture: Jay Town

A new storey will be added to the historic building, and glassed-in “wintergarden” balconies will grace two floors, within the existing wall boundaries.

Plans drawn up by Brenchley Architects also show some internal heritage fabric, including panelling and balustrades from the ground floor staircase, reused to create a new entrance and stairs from Loch St and parquetry on the ground floor retained (presumably after a thorough cleaning.)

The Gatwick’s grubby interior will be transformed. Picture: Kylie Else

Loch St has been closed to traffic between Fitzroy St and West Beach Rd while works are underway, and is expected to reopen in April next year.

Port Phillip Inspector Jason Kelly told the Leader there had been a drop in crime in and around Fitzroy St since the Gatwick was boarded up

“Our evidence is there has been a reduction in incidents on the street, which is a great outcome for the community,” he said.

“We believe the reduction of vulnerable people living there has enhanced and the safety of the street and the immediate area.”

Fitzroy St is safer with the Gatwick closed, police say. Picture Jay Town.

Insp Kelly said he hoped the strip’s fortunes could be turned around by traders and the community.

“The Block have started doing some work there and you can imagine ... between the Pride Centre, the Gatwick being renovated and hopefully some of those vacant shops being filled, Fitzroy St has great potential,” he said.

This is not the first time the hit reno show has transformed a former crime scene into multimillion-dollar real estate.

In 2015, five couples transformed the rundown Hotel Saville in South Yarra into apartments.

The octagonal, eight floor brick building had been the scene of a brutal rape by self-proclaimed vampire gigolo Shane Chartres-Abbott in 2002.

The seedy Hotel Saville also scored a Block makeover.

The victim was found by hotel staff in the shower of her room.

Chartres-Abbott, who allegedly told the woman he was a 200-year-old vampire who drank blood to stay young, was arrested after the attack but was shot dead outside his home in Reservoir before his trial ended.

The gory details were never mentioned on The Block, with a Channel 9 spokesman at the time said he hotel’s horrific past had “no relevance”.

Channel 9 did not comment about the nature of the works currently underway at the Gatwick.