Warwick Farm: Plans for Grand Hotel on El Toro site at Homepride Ave

Plans are under way for a $99m, five-star hotel where a small, budget motel stands in a southwest Sydney suburb undergoing an accommodation boom. See the plans here.

An artist's impression of a hotel for 6 Homepride Ave, Warwick Farm.

Former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and famous Aussie bands rested their heads there in the 1970s but now plans for a $99m hotel on the El Toro Motor Inn site will deliver a five-star hotel for Warwick Farm.

A 126-room hotel with a ballroom, outdoor swimming pool, cafe, lounge area and restaurant, is planned for Warwick Farm to transform the site of the long standing but tired El Toro motel and pub, which is also home to the popular Mexican El Topo Cantina restaurant.

To be called The Grand Hotel, the eight-storey facility would feature a gym and three-level basement carpark with 195 spaces in a building to be constructed on the southern part of 6 Homepride Ave.

Plans have been lodged with Liverpool Council and the state government, which will ultimately determine the project.

Planning documents state the proposal would make the most of the existing carpark.

The Grand Hotel will feature 126 rooms if approved.

“The southern carpark serving the existing accommodation makes no meaningful social, economic or aesthetic contribution to the locality or Liverpool City Centre,’’ documents read.

“The proposal encourages substantial construction and operational employment opportunities in this part of the land, which will create indirect impacts for surrounding development.’’

The hotel is near major industrial parks and arterial roads.

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce treasurer Dimitri Karam said the area needed improvement.

“El Toro’s been there for a long, long time and … an improvement to that area would attract the right tourism dollar into the area and elevate it a little,’’ he said.

“It was known to be a bit rough there so injecting some life into that product would definitely be a good injection into the tourism economy.’’

The former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam celebrated Labor’s historic election win at the El Toro in December 1972.

More than 50 years later, there’s a hotel boom sweeping Warwick Farm where the 146-room Holiday Inn opened on the Hume Highway in 2013.

Labor Leader Gough Whitlam, who would later become Prime Minister with singer Little pattie during the ALP 'It's Time' campaign for the 1972 federal poll.

Last year, William Inglis and Sons revealed plans for a $55m, 10-storey hotel with a childcare facility and conference centre at Warwick Farm.

The Joint Regional Planning Panel approved the $55m project at Governor Macquarie Drive, which was proposed to boost the equine industry in southwest Sydney.

Mr Karam, the chief executive of the Signature Hotel Management Group which is behind the Cabravale Club Resort, said hotels in southwest Sydney held an “ideal” occupancy rate between 78 and 82 per cent but cautioned the supply-demand equation had to be right.

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce treasurer Dimitri Karam.

The site of the proposal is in yellow, with the existing El Toro motel in red.

“We definitely encourage hotels with the right operator selection and the right product mix is needed coming into the area to make sure hotels are not cannibalising each other,’’ he said.

Other factors driving the southwest Sydney hotel market, stretching from Bankstown to Campbelltown, are its proximity to the Western Sydney International Airport, and industrial hubs in Moorebank, Chipping Norton, Smithfield and Wetherill Park.

Mr Karam said there was also a strong family and friend visitor economy, along with medical tourism because of Liverpool’s Ingham Institute for Applied Medical Research.

The Western Sydney International Airport is another factor driving hotel demand, along with Warwick Farm positioned on the Hume Highway meant it was a popular transit hub for travellers en route to Canberra.

Part of the eight-storey proposal for the Grand Hotel breaches the council’s existing maximum heights permitted and a request to vary this has been prepared to support the extra height.

The Sydney Western City Planning Panel is assessing the proposal.

Originally published as Warwick Farm: Plans for Grand Hotel on El Toro site at Homepride Ave