Business View Oceania | September 2020

35 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA SEPTEMBER 2020 INTERCONT INENTAL MELBOURNE THE R I ALTO inside under the atrium. Back in 1891, it was a very interesting building because structures in those days were not fireproof and they were built for one purpose. This was Melbourne’s first completely fireproof building and that was valuable because if you were storing things like your wheat harvest, or bales of your finest wool, you could be sure that no matter what happened in the rest of the city, your things would not burn up. It had elevators which went five storeys and could carry two tons; powered by water using hydraulic pumps. Remember, there was no electricity then. And the building was mixed use. It had residences, offices, stores, factories and entrepreneurial businesses in it – which was very unusual in those days.” BVO: Where do your guests hail from? Steube: “We have 253 rooms and 180 colleagues servicing the guests in the hotel. The bulk of our customers are Australians and you could almost say we’re running two hotels here. The first is our weekday hotel. InterContinental Melbourne The was filled from top to bottom with buildings like what you see when you look at the façade of this hotel. Hundreds of them. Unfortunately, during the 1970s when things weren’t valued for what they were historically, most of them were demolished. “This particular one was saved because it was part of a larger parcel of land and the buildings on it were kept in anticipation of something happening. The owners wished to build a very large office building next door and in return for the permit they were required to do something to retain this building. So, in 1983, they chose to join it up to the neighbouring building with an atrium-style glass ceiling and create what we have now. They no longer own this building but they are owners of the office building next door called the Rialto Tower, and there’s a very close relationship and interfaces between the two buildings and the two management teams. “The original Rialto building has the neo-gothic façade on the front that runs all the way down