The Block secures the Gatwick on seedy Fitzroy Street, St Kilda

Channel 9 has purchased the infamous Gatwick Hotel in Melbourne's St Kilda as the location for an upcoming series of The Block.

A caveat was placed on the property on Wednesday by a company owned by Nine Entertainment Group.

Channel Nine's The Block was keen to renovate the notorious Gatwick Hotel in Victoria despite its seedy location on Fitzroy Street.

It was originally advertised at $11 million plus when placed on the market in December 2015 through Lemon Baxter

Applications are now closed for a 2017 series with an Elsternwick property location in the mix.

The owners of The Gatwick Hotel, sisters Yvette Kelly and Rose Banks, have declined to confirm a sale of the boarding house.

Residents have been given four months notice of the need to move.

The Gatwick Private Hotel at 34 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda was constructed by 1938, one of a number of substantial apartment buildings or private hotels constructed in St Kilda during the inter-war period. It is a three-storey stuccoed building with three street frontages, executed in a restrained Spanish Mission manner.

The building is built to the property boundaries to the three streets.

The interior of the hotel is highly intact.

On the ground floor the reception office and a spacious (former) telephone booth feature Jacobean dark wood panelling with beveled glass lights above.

The former lounge has a large Adamesque ceiling centre in fibrous plaster.

The staircase has a wrought-iron balustrade with a lyre motif.

The Gatwick Private Hotel has been historically associated with the Carbone family who have owned and managed the building since 1977. Vittoria Carbone or ‘Queen Vicky’, in particular is fondly remembered for her compassionate management of the Hotel and her legacy is carried on by her daughters Rose and Yvette.

The 64 room hotel had been on the market for a year before being removed from the market in October 2016.