Part of an 84-year-old inner-city home is set to be transformed into a small cafe.
The development will see a 34sqm room at 5 Berryman Street in Mt Hawthorn — across the road from Menzies Park — converted into a takeaway cafe.
The City of Vincent council voted to change the property zoning from house to a restaurant or cafe at Tuesday night’s council meeting.
The cafe, which has been put forward by Urbanista Town Planning, will have two staff and up to 14 guests and will be open 7am to 4pm Mondays to Saturdays and 9am to 4pm Sundays and public holidays.
“The proposed cafe is extremely small … the cafe is not intended to attract users from outside the local neighbourhood or area; rather, the intention is to operate in conjunction with the existing users of Menzies Park and to serve local residents,” Urbanista director Daniella Mrdja said at last week’s agenda briefing.
Up to six guests will be able to dine on the cafe’s verge.
Four car parking and three bicycle bays will be added to the site.
Deliveries, food preparation, cleaning, setting up and packing down will need to happen during hours of operation.
Cr Alex Castle said at Tuesday night’s meeting she “wholeheartedly” supported the proposal.
“I am a local resident, this will be my local coffee shop … I would actually venture to say that there’s probably not many people in Mt Hawthorn who haven’t walked or driven past this property and thought ‘I’d really love to turn that into a cafe one day’,” she said.
“Having said that, I know this is a commercial use in a residential area and that brings a lot of challenges and it’s something that we have to balance.
“(But) what we have is a very small scale development … and I ultimately don’t believe that this will add any further impact on amenity to the surrounding area that is already built by Menzies Park.”
The proposal was advertised in February, with more than 93 per cent of respondents in support of the development.
Objections raised concerns about amenity, parking, noise, waste and the size of the site.
Resident Nathan Ebbs said at Tuesday night’s council meeting the cafe was a “Trojan horse”.
“Make no mistake, this is a commercial enterprise with one intention: to make money for the operator and owner,” he said.
“The public support for this proposed developments is from those who will not be directly affected … the direct neighbours of the proposed development have voiced their unequivocal opposition and those are the voices that should be given priority.”
Cr Ron Alexander — the only councillor who voted against the item — said he was “concerned” by the application.
“Given that the area has been single use residential for over 60 years … many of the people that are supporting this (live) 100m away and not next door,” he said.
“I’m not sure how happy they (the people who live 100m away) would be if this was next door to their property.”