Melbourne’s inner North welcomes Rydges Bell City
A new multipurpose accommodation facility, Rydges Bell City, has just opened on Bell Street, Preston, a strategic half-way point on the major arterial driving route between Melbourne's CBD and the Tullamarine International Airport.
Located in the new stage two tower of the Bell City precinct, the 4.5 star property offers 182 - one and two - bedroom Manhattan-style hotel rooms and an extensive variety of onsite entertainment and recreational facilities.
Rydges Bell City also contains 21 different function rooms and event spaces - including a ballroom able to cater for up to 500 guests.
Rydges Bell City is the hotel chain's largest property in Australia, its location a telling sign of the increasing popularity of Melbourne’s inner north. Dubbed ‘Fitzroy for grownups’, Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs including Northcote, Thornbury, Brunswick, Preston and Coburg have experienced a major renaissance in the last decade . Once known for industrial warehouses, daggy shopping strips and trashy (but somewhat iconic) Italian furniture stores, the inner north is now a key destination for those seeking cutting-edge live music, alternative and vintage fashion, and distinctive ‘laneway style’ bars away from the city crowds.
Among the many attractions enticing visitors to the north of the river are: many leading original live music venues as the Northcote Social Club, the East Brunswick Club and the Retreat (Brunswick); the unique CERES Environmental Park, with its conservation-friendly design, café and markets; and the the stylishly ‘boho’ fashion and retro shops in Westgarth Village on High Street, Northcote.
It’s also increasingly becoming known for it’s expanding network of groovy city-style bars including Joe’s Shoe Store (High Street, Northcote), a former shoe store reworked into fashionable venue; Glitch Café Bar (St Georges Road, North Fitzroy), a bar with its own cosy 40 (or so) seat cinema at the rear, Atticus Finch (Lygon Street, East Brunswick), a former ‘goth-rock’ den-of-iniquity reborn as subtly elegant watering hole, complete with hot ticket wines, cool beers and even cooler tunes and the Wesley Ann, an old-style bar and atmospheric live music venue established on the site of a former House of Assembly (church).
More information: go to www.rydges.com/bellcity
Media contact: Leanne Tyrrell, Tyrrell Publicity and Promotions on (03) 9629 7000