University of Tasmania buys Hobart CBD’s Fountainside hotel for student accommodation

A hotel in Hobart’s CBD will be transformed into student accommodation after the budget travellers’ favourite was bought by the University of Tasmania for an undisclosed sum.

The Fountainside in Hobart will be housing university students next year.

A HOTEL in Hobart’s CBD will be transformed into student accommodation after the budget travellers’ favourite was bought by the University of Tasmania for an undisclosed sum.

Staff at Fountainside Hotel were called to a meeting on Thursday morning and told the property had been bought by the university at market value.

It is understood that UTAS approached the owners of the 49-room CBD property earlier this month with a purchase offer after copping criticism for its inability to house many of its returning students.

UNIVERSITY SAYS LOOK ONLINE FOR ACCOMMODATION

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Fountainside will continue to operate as a hotel until February 12 – the weekend of the Wooden Boat Festival. About 27 staff were affected by Thursday’s announcement.

BGOC general manager Tony Giacon said efforts would be made to redeploy some positions to the company’s other hotels, St Ives and Bayview, or with other providers in the city.

“Whilst in the majority of cases no redundancies are due … [owners James and Margaret] Bleasel, because of the people they are, are making sure people go away with money,” Mr Giacon said.

“Ultimately staff would’ve preferred it wasn’t happening and when you’re told it is going to happen it comes as a shock but they all understood and they appreciate the redundancy fund.”

Mr and Mrs Bleasel, who once owned the 9/11 bottleshop chain and are both aged in their 80s, had sold Fountainside for a variety of reasons, Mr Giacon said.

“It was the right thing at the right time,” he said.

UTAS students in residential accommodation had previously been encouraged to look online for a room after the university had received more applications than it could service with its existing 1100 beds.

The purchase of Fountainside, the erection of demountable buildings at UTAS’s Sandy Bay campus and renovations at the UTAS-owned MidCity and the Theatre Royal hotels will add an extra 300 student beds to the university’s Hobart portfolio by the start of semester one.

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UTAS spokesman Jason Purdie said Fountainside would be fitted out over the break to house almost 100 students.

“The new measures are an interim step to fill an undersupply which is projected until a new, 430-bed accommodation complex is finished in Melville St in 2020,” Mr Purdie said.

“The university is also offering study and accommodation packages in Launceston, along with new course offerings through the Northern Transformation program, which will ease demand on accommodation demand in Hobart and provide economic benefit in the North of the state.”

UTAS last week received applause from the student union for responding to students’ needs but the tourism sector has reacted to the sale of Fountainside with disappointment.

Tourism Industry Council Tasmania chief executive Luke Martin said it was time UTAS considered a “more sustainable solution” to student accommodation requirements than buying CBD hotels.

“You don’t begrudge any property owner divesting their asset, especially in such a buoyant market, but it is disappointing to see such a prominent hotel lost to the sector,” Mr Martin said.

“Hopefully the workforce is absorbed into other positions across the sector.”