Grollo Group, the largest stakeholder in the Mt Buller ski resort area, has filed applications with the Victorian planning department to amend a key asset—the exclusive drive-in, ski-out Whitehorse Village.
The amendments for Chalet WHV1, or Parcel 2017, in Whitehorse Village involve changing the plans to add four detached chalets.
Previously permitted cafe and retail components and a top floor apartment would be deleted from the plans under the amendments.
Mt Buller, a three-hour drive from Melbourne, is one of Victoria’s key snowfield destinations. It has more than 300ha of skiable terrain set on Taungurung land.
The applications come soon after Lorenz Grollo sold Lot D3 and the adjacent carpark C11 in Whitehorse Village to Lotte Grimus, who owns the hotel Pension Grimus next door, for $1.375 million.
Grimus told media at the time that it was purchased right before auction with the expected sale price around $1.45 million.
The vacant site fronting the Bourke Street ski run is zoned for a free-standing chalet.
The Grimus family said it is an opportunity to extend its family-owned and operated hotel business.
Grollo Group also developed the Chalet Hotel, Chalet apartments, Alto apartments, Aborn apartments and the Courchevel apartments, and for a time owned and operated the Mt Buller Ski Lift Company.
The group is a property, tourism and investment company that formed in the 1940s.
Part of its operations includes Daniel Grollo’s Grocon, a company involved in a lawsuit with Infrastructure NSW for $270 million over the Central Barangaroo project.
Lorenz Grollo now heads up the Grollo Group.
Regional areas across the country have struggled to provide enough worker accommodation for those working in tourism, agricultural and other industries with many business owners looking at different strategies.
Grollo’s plan to build workers accommodation in another ski field area, Mt Hotham, was also warmly welcomed.
