Phil, who owns the former Vic Hotel site, attended the meeting last week that was the culmination of nine months of hard work, planning and meetings with council staff, the local police and surveyors to ensure that all regulations were met and all criteria was satisfied.

The initial decision to close the pub and nightclub on the premises was an extremely costly exercise for Phil, however he decided that the social problems associated with the businesses weren't something he wanted to be associated with.

"Things had been getting out of hand there for a while and although it cost us a lot of money we decided to take the building in a new direction," Phil explained.

Gradually the site has been transformed, now housing two reputable restaurants, however the former drive-through bottle shop space is still available.

"If I wanted to re-open the bottle shop as it was, I could, but we wanted to improve the existing business and so we applied for the new development."

Coles was more than happy to jump on board and purchase the licence off Phil, to enable them to run a second Liquorland outlet through the site that would now incorporate the existing shop as well as the former front bar of the hotel.

When the Development Application (DA) came to council, after much discussion councillors were evenly divided over the final decision and as reported in Friday's Time,s mayor Paul Hogan used his casting vote to refuse the DA.

He argued that there was insufficient parking available and a lack of disabled access, saying poor planning was the issue.

But Phil refutes the claims about insufficient parking, saying that there were a further five car spaces available in the basement of the adjoining property that could be used by bottle shop patrons, as well as slamming the comparisons between his development application and a previous one by Woolworths for a Dan Murphy's outlet on Victoria Street.

"They're two completely different DAs," he said.

"Ours is a drive-through bottle shop and convenience store and it's considerably smaller than Dan Murphy's with a different purpose."

Following the refusal Phil has been in talks with councillors, council staff, local licensing officers and advisors and has the support of three councillors to lodge a rescission motion and hopefully see the DA back before council at the December meeting.

"I'm more than happy to sit down and hash it all out so that everyone can be happy and this can go ahead," he admitted.

"We've been trying to work with everyone from the beginning and we want the best possible outcome for the community.

"There's nothing wrong with some healthy competition," Phil said.

He was again supported by Cr David West who reiterated his stance on the matter and said there was not one issue with planning that he could see.

"The council staff who have put together this application and saw it suitable to be endorsed are the trained professionals and experts, I can't see a problem with it," Cr West said.