A legendary music venue in Melbourne burned down this week, a month after its controversial closure. The Palace, in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, had been a popular live music venue in the city since it opened in 1972. What's more, it was built on the site of the city's former Palais de Danse, which also burned down, in 1968, so the site had over a century's worth of music heritage.
The venue closed down after a long running dispute between the venue's operators Bradto Pty Ltd and the local council who controlled the site. The area around the venue is earmarked for development and some fans of the venue claim the council forced its closure so that it could be demolished to make way for an apartment block. Others say that the council is actually planning a revamped entertainment complex on the site, which would maintain the area's musical history, but with improved facilities.
Either way, the venue was all but destroyed when a fire began there, in somewhat suspicious circumstances, earlier this week. It took seventy firefighters to bring the blaze under control on Wednesday afternoon. Arson experts are now reportedly on the site, which has been declared a crime scene, to ascertain whether the fire was started deliberately.
Commenting on the demise of the iconic venue, Australian music website Undercover wrote this week: "The recent closure of the 100 year old venue has been a political thorn in recent years following the local St Kilda council's conniving part in having the popular music venue shut down and torn down for the purpose of building apartments. The council, playing politics all the way through the process, even denied to Undercover that the closure would happen and insisted that the building would remain a music venue. But, like all political lies, the truth came out eventually. Now, Melbourne has finally lost the heritage venue under suspicious circumstances".
Bands to play the venue over the years included Nirvana, Elvis Costello, Sex Pistols, Midnight Oil, De La Soul, The Cult, Soundgarden, Public Enemy, Savage Garden, Muse, Foo Fighters, Billy Bragg, The White Stripes, Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand.