Popular Museum of Old and New Art to get a hotel

THE new addition is unlike anything that has gone before. No surprise given the guy behind it.

Sure to be Hobart’s hottest new hotel. Picture: Fender Katsalidis Architects

VISITORS are flooding into Tasmania to see the Museum of Old and New Art, so founder David Walsh is building a new ‘Hotel at MONA’ — HOMO for short.

Mr Walsh has unveiled plans for the 172-room five-star hotel to cater for the 260,000 interstate visitors who go to the Hobart museum every year.

The proposed new hotel for at MONA Picture: Fender Katsalidis Architects

“It’s very simple really. We like building stuff,” he said during an address to Tasmania’s tourism industry yesterday.

“This time, some may think it’s gotten a little out of hand — the excavation alone is more than four times the size of that for the museum.

“But we seem to have some support, the plans have turned out pretty well and we can’t rest on our laurels forever.”

Hobart has seen a tourism boom since Mr Walsh’s museum opened in 2011, with new hotels also springing up in the CBD.

Mr Walsh also proposed to shift his annual MONA FOMA festival, known as MOFO, to Launceston.

Festival curator and Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie said MOFO’s 10-year plan “to change the culture in Hobart has come to fruition ahead of schedule”. “We’d like to embark on a new creative journey .... to make it bigger, better, more creative, more diverse and more famous,” he said.

Proposed site of the new hotel. Picture: Fender Katsalidis Architects

MONA co-chief executive Mark Wilsdon wants the hotel to boost interstate tourism, which accounts for almost 75 per cent of visitors.

“We expect HOMO to be attractive to large segments of the national and international business and conference markets that previously haven’t turned to Tasmania due to a lack of appropriate infrastructure,” Mr Wilsdon said. Construction will take about three years and create 300 jobs, while another 120 ongoing jobs will be created at the hotel.