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A towering hotel complex slated for the top of Regent Street could finally be approved this week, with architects and Wollongong City Council staff reaching an agreement over the $66 million building’s design. If approved, the 29-level hotel and apartment block will be the largest and most prominent development to be built between Sydney and Melbourne. It would contain a 4.5-star hotel and residential tower with 23 luxury apartments and four levels of commercial office space. The hotel would have 190 rooms as well as a restaurant, bar, conference centre and rooftop spa and infinity pool. Council planners have recommended the complex – known as Regency Towers – be approved by the region’s planning umpire, which will meet on Thursday to consider the fifth revision of the hotel since December 2013. At its latest meeting last December, the Southern Joint Regional Planning Panel (JRPP) ordered applicant David Shalala, along with PRD Architects and planning consultants Cardno, to organise a peer review of their plans. This would serve as a ‘‘circuit breaker’’ between the backers and the council’s design review panel, who could not agree on the aesthetics of the building. The project’s backers were also asked to provide a 3D model and rejig the eastern facade ‘‘to reduce the perceived bulk of the building’’, and address traffic engineers’ concerns about access. Standing at 80metres tall on Wollongong’s tallest hill, the development would easily be the city’s most visible building. However in the peer review documents, architect Andrew Conacher noted future development in the CBD could reduce the hotel’s ‘‘impact and visibility over the medium to long term. For instance, a 3D model of possible future development in Wollongong’s CBD shows buildings standing up to 120metres along Crown Street. ‘‘The present context is less relevant than the proposed future context,’’ he said. ‘‘The precinct is undergoing rapid change, being located in the CBD and while this development will be ‘out of context’ physically in the short term, it will be the forerunner for future similar permissible development.’’ In a recommendation to the planning panel published last week, Wollongong council staff said the project should be approved, noting the applicants had addressed previous concerns about the appearance of the building. They said ‘‘significant remodelling’’ of the tower had occurred, with its apparent scale reduced by the insertion of a central recess, which visibly separated the building into two sections. ‘‘The revised design satisfactorily reduces apparent width and bulk when viewed from the east,’’ the report said. ‘‘The lower level [streetscape view] is improved as a result of the remodelling of the podium and a more coherent connection with the tower results.’’ The panel will meet on Thursday at the council’s Burelli Street headquarters at 2pm.

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