THE Western Bulldogs will fight Maribyrnong Council's refusal to allow them to build the $25 million "Bulldog Hilton" at the Edgewater Estate in Melbourne's west.

The council last week voted unanimously against the application for a four-star hotel, function centre, dining options and 65 poker machines. But the Bulldogs believe the council's planning concerns were overridden by misplaced anti-gaming sentiment.

The planning issues centred on inadequate car parking, the impact on local traffic and the fact that gaming machines are not permitted in strip shopping centres.

The Bulldogs are seeking to move the machines from three venues, including the redeveloped Whitten Oval, four kilometres away.

Bulldogs director Neil O'Keefe said the club hoped to work further with the council to alleviate its planning concerns before taking the application to appeal.

"We're very disappointed with the council's decision and we think that the anti-gaming lobby, if you want to call it that, has overcome what I would call good planning policy," O'Keefe said.

While the club has not made the application — developer Prizac and Tattersalls have — the Bulldogs are committed to signing a long-term lease to run the premises as their social venue.

The gaming licence application will be heard next month, with the machines a key part of the project, despite taking up less than 4% of the floor space.

"From the time we first began informally discussing the proposal with the council, we received assurances that the council's focus would stay on the planning issues because it wasn't a gaming matter. But we don't believe that is what has happened," O'Keefe said.

"I think they got it in their heads that this was going to be like the King Street nightclub strip with a whole lot of brawling in the streets at 4am and that couldn't be further from reality.

"I'm saying very openly that poker machines should never have been in shopping centres and never have been in pubs.

"The State Government is looking for high-quality destination venues where these machines will be placed and, in my view, this proposal from the Western Bulldogs is absolutely front and centre the kind of example the Government wants to push."

Maribyrnong Mayor Michelle MacDonald said the planning issues were "black and white" but confirmed the poker machines were the key reason the proposal had been rejected.

"The main reason we rejected it is because we as a council get to decide what is an appropriate venue for poker machines and it's completely inappropriate," she said. "It's less than a kilometre from our most disadvantaged areas and our most highly populated poorest communities, so all of those issues were quite cut and dried."