The decision on the proposed six-storey hotel at 107 Doveton Street South has been deferred to another day.
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In an unusually brief meeting held at town hall on Wednesday night, council officers put forward an amended recommendation to pause the councillors' vote on the planning permit application.
The original recommendation had been to refuse the application for the hotel and the licensed café and restaurant proposed for the ground floor.
However, the City of Ballarat's director of development and growth Natalie Robertson said that amended plans had been received by council planners on Monday.
The changes are likely to have been in response to the planning meeting agenda published earlier in the week in which a council officer report recommended the application for the 93-room hotel be rejected on several grounds.
These included that the design of the six-storey hotel could have a negative impact on future development proposals in the area, as well as concerns over trucks reversing into an access lane.
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The recommendation to defer consideration of those new plans was approved unanimously by all councillors present.
Ms Robertson said council planning officers would need to assess whether the changes submitted to the existing permit application were significant enough to warrant the application being publicly advertised once again. If they are not, they would just be conveyed to those who had lodged comments on the original plans last year.
There were 17 objections to those plans when they were publicly advertised in September. Among the concerns raised were the building's design and height, its proximity to the nearby Dana Street Primary School, and a perception there was not enough parking provided given the hotel's size.
Councillors are likely to consider the revised plans within the next two planning meetings - ie in May or June this year.
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