Gatwick Hotel ex-owners fire final parting shot after The Block takes purchases notorious St Kilda building

ST Kilda’s notorious Gatwick Hotel has been closed and boarded shut before its reality TV makeover on The Block next year — but the run-down flophouse’s previous owners have gotten the last word.

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The 13th series of The Block gets underway on Nine on Sunday, charting the makeover of the five relocated, rundown weatherboard properties on the Elsternwick plot.

But a few kilometres away, the production’s new toy, the Gatwick Hotel, cuts a gloomy and miserable figure on St Kilda’s Fitzroy St.

Since officially closing earlier this month, the run-down Gatwick has been locked up, and all ground floor windows boarded to prevent vandalism and break-ins.

The Gatwick Hotel in St Kilda has been closed — but not before its previous owners took one final parting shot.

NOTORIOUS HOTEL A HOTBED OF VILLAINY

PLANS REVEALED FOR GATWICK FLOPHOUSE

A longwinded whinge by former owners Rose Banks and Yvette Kelly, in which they decry the closure of the grotty property, remains glued haphazardly to the front of the building.

“There will never be another Gatwick. God bless all those who lived here. Rest in Peace ‘Gatty’,” it read in part.

And then there is a charming photo of the sisters flipping the camera off stuck to the locked doors of the crumbling hotel.

A message from the hotel’s previous owners.

The longwinded message was pasted on the boarded-up building.

The notorious hotel ran for more than four decades.

Plans to convert the hotel into eight luxury apartments were submitted to the Port Phillip Council in June on behalf of The Block producers.

Six of the planned apartments would have three bedrooms, while two proposed ground floor apartments would have two bedrooms.

A fourth floor would be built on top of the existing building. Heritage features such as doors, staircases, timber skirtings and architraves would be rescued and reused within the renovation.

The size of the project would suggest the 2018 edition of The Block will feature at least six couples making it the biggest season of the show yet filmed.

The Fitzroy St property is boarded up.

A photo of the Gatwick’s former owners on the property’s locked front door.

Ten seems to be the magic number for The Block, with the show getting little change out of $10 million for the vacant site it bought in Elsternwick in December.

It now houses five fully renovated luxury homes.

And it seems that $10 million was the figure that finally saw the Channel Nine production purchase the Gatwick.

Estimates had put the possible sale price as high as $15 million, but sources have confirmed the price was closer to $10 million.

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