Ghosts, murder, rape, drugs, halfway house: Dark past of the new Block

THE Gatwick Hotel has a starring role as the ugly duckling of the 2018 series of The Block but a lick of paint won’t cover the grim past.

THEY say in real estate you buy the worst property on the best street.

But producers of The Block upped the ante on the adage when they bought St Kilda’s infamous Gatwick Hotel.

The squalid 66-room hotel and boarding house has been billed the worst hotel in Australia.

Channel 9 officially confirmed the worst kept Block secret when host Scott Cam unveiled The Gatwick as the site for the 2018 series of the show on Sunday night.

A walk-through the derelict hotel, rumoured to have cost $10 million, showcased the boarded up exterior and graffiti-riddled interior and revealed — it’s in grim shape.

It may prove to be a reality TV renovator’s dream, but The Gatwick Hotel had an equally grim past.

The Gatwick has been boarded up since it was vacated midyear. Picture: Fiona Byrne

Locals who saw Cam’s tour were quick to comment.

“If the walls of that joint could talk,” said Rhett Withmore via Twitter.

“Mate, they will, with ghosts,” was the reply.

LOW RENT REPUTATION

The Gatwick Hotel in Melbourne’s St Kilda may be surrounded by some of Melbourne’s most expensive properties, but its reputation is as low rent as it gets.

Rumour has it the boarding house, described variously as a “flea pit”, a “festering flophouse” and a drug den, was where Melbourne’s down-and-outs went to die, and was so fearsome many homeless people avoided it.

Disrepair: The Gatwick when it was opened to the public for the last time. Picture: Kylie Else

Murder, violence, assault, desperation, drug dealing and overdoses abounded.

Between January and June of 2016, more than 50 serious crimes including rapes, drug dealing, and vicious assaults occurred there, according to The Herald Sun.

Leaked police data showed the property was the scene of an arson, a stabbing, two rapes, at least 19 drug offences and aggravated burglaries.

In 2011, a man was stabbed to death by an alcoholic who drank 14 litres of cask wine.

It was the fourth violent death connected to the Gatwick in the preceding six years.

Crumbling: A door lock and handle inside a double room at the Gatwick. Picture: News Corp.

Renovator’s dream,: a bathroom in the building. Picture: News Corp

“There’s no hiding the fact that there’s been murders, violent assaults, there have been drug overdoses there,” Detective Sergeant Ed Logonder said.

Before it was sold to Channel 9 in March this year, the hotel’s TripAdvisor reviews warned prospective visitors to steer well clear of the “hotbed of violence and drugs”.

One suggested it was cheaper — and safer — to buy a hammer, hit yourself with it, and spend the night in the emergency department rather than stay there.

The Gatwick was put on the market in December 2015, when longtime owners, twin sisters Yvette Kelly and Rose Banks, said they could no longer afford the maintenance on the building, but seemed reluctant to sign off on a deal for sale below their $12 million asking price. They variously confirmed the place was for sale, then said it was off the market.

The pair told makers of a 2015 documentary called The Saints from St Kildathey had days that were like living nightmares and people would sometimes skip out on paying rent, spending their pensions and dole payments on gambling and drugs instead.

But they said the loved the place, despite its flaws.

Low-rent: A wash basin at the Gatwick. Picture: Kylie Else

NO LOVE FROM SOME LOCALS

The same wasn’t true for politicians and police and some locals, who ran community meetings to try to address law and order problems.

Housing Minister Martin Foley declared war on the boarding house in January, when, fed up with the crime figures he said the owners should vacate the building.

“It’s not good for the people who live there, it’s not good for the local community,” Mr Foley told The Herald Sun.

“They are no longer capable of running a rooming house that’s up to community standards.”

When the place sold and the hotel officially closed in July, with all the ground floors boarded up to prevent vandalism, the sisters left a lengthy message lamenting the closure posted outside the building.

Parting shot: Former owners Yvette Kelly and Rose Banks at the Gatwick. Picture: Fiona Byrne

“For more than 46 years, we have given our all ... There will never be another Gatwick. God bless all those who lived here. Rest in Peace ‘Gatty’,” read the note stuck to the locked doors of the crumbling hotel, complete with a picture of the sisters flipping the bird.

”We never judged or asked questions. We always made this place feel like home. Unfortunately not everyone felt the way we did,” the note continued.

The sisters said politicians, police and local traders saw things differently and claimed they were “constantly hounded” for “giving refuge to those who really needed it”.

Ms Kelly and Ms Banks said they faced years of pressure from locals trying to close down the hotel, many saying the area was a no-go zone with a “threatening vibe” and people avoided it because it was unsafe.

The Gatwick had operated since the 1950s, with the sisters running it from the 1970s, after promising their mother on her deathbed they would keep the doors open.

If the walls of that joint could talk...

— Rhett Wilsmore (@RhettWilsmore) October 29, 2017