An eyesore mansion dubbed the ‘Taj Mahal on the Swan’ will finally be demolished after the couple who did not complete it agreed to call in the bulldozers.
The Peppermint Grove property, expected to be worth up to $70 million when complete, has been covered in graffiti since being abandoned by Pankaj and Radhika Oswal in 2011.
When their Burrup Fertilisers empire collapsed a year earlier, the Oswals left Australia owing $186 million in taxes.
The local council has long wanted it gone and was delighted on Friday when a breakthrough was reached.
Peppermint Grove shire president Rachel Thomas says an application filed by Ms Oswal with the State Administrative Tribunal to prevent the demolition is being withdrawn.
Preparation works must begin by December 31 and the site must be cleared by September 30 next year, all at the Oswals’ expense.
‘We’d rather it was demolished sooner rather than later, and given this has been going on for so long … it seemed a reasonable compromise to accept the timetable that was proposed,’ Ms Thomas said.
‘We believed we had a pretty good case and they’ve obviously decided that perhaps we did have a good case.’
Ms Thomas said police are regularly called to the unfinished property.
‘It was a real nuisance for the immediate neighbours in particular because of the antisocial behaviour. And with the graffiti, it was a real blot on the landscape,’ she said.
‘We’ve had people smoking dope in there … noisy parties … it’s been a real problem.’
Ms Thomas said the council would prefer that the 6800-square-metre lot is subdivided into five or six smaller blocks.
The Indian-style property listed on Google maps as a ‘tourist attraction’ is also popular with parkour enthusiasts.
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