Cronulla’s only backpacker hostel will close in two years and be replaced by a six-storey apartment block.
The hostel has provided accommodation for up to 20,000 backpackers since it opened 17 years ago.
The move comes as Sutherland Shire Council is looking at ways to increase tourist accommodation at Cronulla.
Michael Keogh, who established the hostel, now known as Cronulla Beach Backpackers, and has managed it since, is redeveloping the site which includes an adjoining old building formerly used by a motor mechanic.
The property, at the corner of Kingsway and Wilbar Avenue, is owned by a family company in which he and his brother are shareholders.
Mr Keogh gave personal and business reasons for the move, which has reached the stage of a development application (DA) being lodged.
“After 17 years in the hostel business, we are up for a change,” he said.
“It’s time to open a new chapter in our lives.”
Mr Keogh said an important factor was the lifting of building heights in the Cronulla commercial core in the 2015 local environmental plan (LEP).
“This site is zoned for six-storeys,” he said.
“It’s a matter of either stick in a time warp, with a backpacker hostel and a little house next to it on the corner, or we take an opportunity to say in two years time, ‘after 20 years in the backpacker business, it’s time to go’.
“It doesn’t make sense to build anything less because you would be under-developing, and you would be committing economic suicide if you opened a six-storey backpacker hostel in Cronulla.
“You couldn’t have a mix of backpacker and residential in the one building.
”If you had three levels of backpackers and three storeys of residential, how do you think that would go [with potential apartment buyers]?”
The proposed development, which will also result in the closure of the Mexican restaurant below the hostel, and art gallery in the adjoining building, has been attacked on social media.
Comments have also been made about the effect of the development on two heritage listed fig trees, one of which the Leader revealed three months ago Roads and Maritime Services proposes to remove to install traffic lights.
Mr Keogh said he was “a bit amazed” at the reaction.
“I can understand how young people could get frustrated that a restaurant might be going, but we will have retail spaces in the new building and there is no reason why, over the next 18 months, [the restaurant proprietors] can’t come and talk to us,” he said.
“I am also offended a little bit that all of a sudden I am the guy responsible for the art centre in Cronulla going.
“I have given them a super cheap deal [on rent] and I advised them four years ago [of the plans].”
Mr Keogh said the development had been designed to protect the fig trees, which are in the road reserve.
“We love the trees and want them to stay,” he said.
“We have been working with the council on this redevelopment for 12 months, and we asked them to get rid of the car spaces between the trees, which results in tar going right up to the trees.
”Our landscape plan includes barriers around the trees.”
Mr Keogh said they “took a leap of faith” when they “set up this hostel in a suburb that wasn’t known by backpackers”.
“We provide 16,000 to 20,000 bed nights a year,” he said.
”Because backpackers stay for different lengths of time – some for three months – it’s difficult to estimate the number of individuals we have had stay here.
”To have a punt, I would say at least 10,000, but possibly as many as 20,000.”
Mr Keogh said he thought it would be difficult for a backpacker hostel to be set up elsewhere in Cronulla because the council would only allow them in the commercial area.
The DA said the proposed development “is likely to have only positive social and economic impacts in the locality.”
It would “result in an increase in the available housing stock in the locality and will offer an alternative housing type in the form of apartment living with high amenity and accessibility.”
“The ground floor commercial tenancies will contribute to the economic viability of Cronulla commercial core,” the DA said.
