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THIS IS NOT AN AD FOR AIRBNB
O
h boy did I need a break. And my goodness did I get one. Two weeks in New Zealand’s South Island with my wife and two teenage kids. Awesome. Anyone who’s ever been, will nod knowingly. Our hire car had a virtual ‘swear jar’ ready to accept payment anytime anyone said ‘just look at those mountains!’. Suffice it to say, we had enough virtual NZ bucks to shout ourselves a slap up burger dinner at the famous Fergburger of Queenstown! Travelling with digital kids and a neat-freak wife meant our non-negotiable demands were good wi-fi and squeaky-clean digs. Personally, I was blown away by the quality of the boutique beer which was readily available no matter how remote the location. We mixed our trip between AirBnB and hotel accommodation. Interestingly it demonstrated just why AirBnB is proving to be such a game changer — mostly the accommodation is just so much more memorable. Let me explain. Queenstown: we pushed our budget to rent a three-bed home in nearby Arthurs Point. It was a family home with every amenity, including alfresco claw-foot bathtubs to enjoy the expansive views while being par-boiled by coals underneath. More than a well-appointed house, the kid’s bedroom had a ‘treasure map’ to the eight year old’s hideout up the hill; it had a draw full of DVDs (Asterix mostly); there was (inexplicably) an American Gothic pitchfork out the front and we were encouraged to not bother locking the doors when we went out sightseeing. In other words, it was packed with things we’ll carry with us in our family’s collective memory. Lake Wanaka: we took a punt on what looked like a permaculture kibbutz run by a septuagenarian Swiss called Urs. The straw bale granny flat was comfy enough but what made the stay so amazing was the morning banana muffins (imperfect but made with love) and the encounter with an organic ‘food ’n’ board’ Yank who leant us his bag full of competition frisbees (‘discs’, for those in the know) for my son and I to play a round of disc golf at sunset, savouring each other’s company and soaking in the 360° views. Again, these are the memories we’ll carry. Franz Josef Glacier: another AirBnB with a clean kitchen and good wi-fi — check and check. But more than simply someone’s log cabin holiday home it was the fireplace with the plentiful kindling and wood shed that allowed me to teach my daughter the art of starting a fire. Truth be told, she didn’t need a lot of tuition but the time we spent snuggled up watching the dancing flames, hypnotised after a long day yomping over glaciers, will be moments I will always cherish. As for the hotels? The truth be told, I’ve mostly forgotten them. Except for the remarkable Chateau on the Park (now a Doubletree by Hilton) in Christchurch, with its fairytale mock tudor architecture, breathtakingly beautiful gardens and warm choc-chip cookies on arrival. But here’s my point and it’s not one lost on hotel operators: how do hotels compete with private accommodation providers on the ‘memorable’ stakes? When it’s your business to provide professional, efficient service to hundreds of patrons every night, how to compete with Urs who has one family to look after? I don’t need to tell the big hotel operators that they have a challenge. Starwood, Hilton, Accor and co. have all pumped billions into developing boutique brands pushing the unique experience message. Yet, they must still play to their strengths: leveraging their muscle to train staff better than any B&B, to use their connections to provide better local insights and the inside running on events, and ultimately be better situated and do more of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. To conclude, I’ll say it again: my family holiday would have been a disaster without Pine-o-clean digs and good wi-fi but the memories would have been far poorer if they were the only criteria. Thanks goodness for Urs, our disc-toting Yank, hide outs, pot belly stoves, and the other unique memories that will live long in my brood’s memories. Christopher Holder Editorial Director, chris@venuemag.com
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CONTENTS October 2016 No 64
issue sixty four 2016 Th e N e w p o r t • G a r d e n S t at e H o t e l • G r e g o r y H i l l s H o t e l • Th e I m p e r i a l H o t e l
we’re levelling up. Sand Hill Road is so much better off, not only for having this new site, but for having all this new expertise
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Big Pub Special
More Pubs
14 Garden State Hotel, Melbourne 30 Imperial Hotel, Melbourne 34 The Newport, Sydney 40 Gregory Hills Hotel, Sydney 54 Northcote Social Club 64 Oxford Hotel
Restaurant/Bar
CONTACTS: Advertising Office: (02) 9986 1188 PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 Editorial Office: (03) 5331 4949 PO Box 295, Ballarat, VIC 3353 Editorial Director: Christopher Holder (chris@venuemag.com)) Publisher: Philip Spencer (philip@venuemag.com) Art Direction & Design: Dominic Carey (dominic@alchemedia.com.au) Graphic Designer: Daniel Howard (daniel@alchemedia.com.au) Circulation Enquiries: (subscriptions@alchemedia.com.au) Accounts: Jaedd Asthana (accounts@alchemedia.com.au)
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Alchemedia Publishing pty ltd (ABN: 34 074 431 628) PO Box 6216, Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 info@alchemedia.com.au All material in this magazine is copyright Š 2015 Alchemedia Publishing Pty Ltd. The title Venue is a registered Trademark. Apart from any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. The publishers believe all information supplied in this magazine to be correct at the time of publication. They are not in a position to make a guarantee to this effect and accept no liability in the event of any information proving inaccurate. After investigation and to the best of our knowledge and belief, prices, addresses and phone numbers were up to date at the time of publication. It is not possible for the publishers to ensure that advertisements appearing in this publication comply with the Trade Practices Act, 1974. The responsibility is on the person, company or advertising agency submitting or directing the advertisement for publication. The publishers cannot be held responsible for any errors or omissions, although every endeavour has been made to ensure complete accuracy.
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HOTELS & HASHTAGS
H
ow often do we get invited to something we know we should go to, but… we’re just so busy; we’ve got so much else to do; or every manager, supplier, barman and partner needs a piece of us. How could we possibly fit in one more forum, seminar or training day? And yes, that’s the sort of invitation I’m talking about, not the ones that invite you to a day at the races, or a box at the footy, or a ‘study trip’ to Spain. If you’re overloaded with those types of invites, suck it up, I’ve got no sympathy for you at all! However, it’s normally the less ‘exotic’ invites that prove the most useful — the ones that feel a bit more like hard work. Not that smashing down beers in The Birdcage at 10am on Oaks Day isn’t a useful endeavour (and not that it isn’t a little ‘hard work’ either, come to think of it). No matter how technology changes our lives — business lives or personal — nothing will ever quite beat actual human beings meeting each other in the real world, with beer. Just as well, right? Or venue magazine would have a limited life span, as would the actual venues, and — even worse — venue operators! So sure, the pure junket still has its place as a means of doing business, but it’s the seminars, forums and training days that can really change the way we do business. If we’re open to it… and if we turn up.
THE FUTURE LABORATORY In February each year, the Future Laboratory — a London-based futurist think-tank (my goodness, those words wouldn’t have gone together a decade ago!) — send their brightest minds out into the world to share a year’s worth of trend forecasting, brand analysis and general cool-hunting. They run Trend Briefings and Futures Forums in Sydney and Melbourne, which I attended earlier this year. In a darkened auditorium, two middle-aged madgenius-types led us through the recent history of ‘authenticity’ branding. You know the thing, where every product you want anything to do with has to be ‘authentic’, ‘real, ‘crafted’, ‘artisanal’; has to have a provenance story; has to be hand-made by bearded brothers from foraged produce in a centuries-old workshop to an unwritten recipe handed down from their recently-deceased maternal grandmother. Yep, love ’em or hate ’em, hipsters have completely transformed the expectations we have of the products and services we consume today in the western world. And while I was listening to these words, I was sitting there thinking, ‘Yep, I like it. Sounds about right to me.’ Then they played a new Haagen-Daaz ice cream ad. The ad used every one of those authenticity catchwords — plus some others — in a slick 90-second television commercial designed to sell mass-produced frozen dairy. It was enough to give me one of those ice-cream headaches I used to get as a kid when I ate way too much Peters Neapolitan way too fast. The lesson I drew from the headache: if we have to tell people we’re authentic, we’re probably not.
The Victorian office of the Australian Hotels Association runs a regular event. I would call it a ‘forum’, or a ‘seminar’ or even a ‘symposium’ had I not just learnt a valuable lesson about wanky labelling. So for the purposes of this column, let’s stick with ‘event’. At the Hotels & Hashtags event, the AHA gathered a group of experts and leaders to share ideas and advice about the pub industry with attending members. By way of transparency, I should mention they also gathered me, although being neither an expert or a leader I’m still not at all sure why they handed me a mic. Nonetheless, what ensued was a rousing rendition of my go-to karaoke number Livin’ on a Prayer, which I’m reliably informed will be remembered for a very long time to come. Those properly qualified to speak at the event shared a number of ideas about the sorts of change we’re likely to see in our venues in the years to come. Naturally, we heard a lot about cashless transactions, about interactivity with music, about automated self-ordering systems. We heard about digital menus that can be updated minute by minute, and feature imagery and video to augment a customer’s decisionmaking process. We heard about smart tabletops that know what you’re drinking when you put your glass down, know when you’re almost finished, and order you the next one. The idea that really hit me was about digital marketing, and in particular, content. We’ve been hearing so much for years now about the role social media plays and will continue to play in and for our businesses. It’s often said, and surely true, that in the world of social media, businesses could so easily be talking to themselves, unless the content they post is good, is interesting, and is delivered right. We heard some fascinating stats: on Instagram, pics showing faces get 38% more likes than those without. In recent years the number of average daily video views on Facebook has been growing exponentially — it now exceeds 10 billion views a day, and it’s predicted that 74% of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video. The lesson here: stop posting pics of plates of food, post video of the chef showing how he made it instead.
LICENSEES FORUM Perhaps the least ‘exotic’ of all the invitations I know I should accept are the ones that invite me to a local Licensees Forum. In my case, I attend three different forums; three different takes on un-exoticness, but all of them utterly essential to running a licensed premises in this day and age. At the most recent Forum, in the City of Yarra, a guest speaker described the signs of, types of, and consequences of sexual assaults; most of which are perpetrated by men on women. She also opened my eyes even wider to the ways I, my staff, my security and my patrons might play a role in identifying and intercepting potential sexual assaults in and around our venues. Our local Licensing Inspector pointed out shortly after that assaults in venues — sexual and other — are decreasing, not increasing, probably as a result of licensee’s ever-stricter adherence to RSA laws. Still, I took a big lesson from this sobering and important topic: pubs like mine need to be the safest places for anyone to go to. For men sure, but especially for women. Because no invitation to attend a pub should ever feel like ‘hard work’.
stop posting pics of plates of food, post video of the chef showing how he made it instead
SMOOTH OPERATOR By Exotic Invite Only Matt Mullins is a partner in Sand Hill Road hospitality group
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see it on:
vimeo.com/venuemag
Heavy Plant: Sand Hill Road’s masterstroke was to make the garden the central feature of the pub. A rooftop bar would have given the venue more floorspace but nowhere near the same beauty and amenity. Bromic gas heaters ensure punter comfort.
14
S
umming up an entire state’s identity with a number plate slogan is a tall order. Victoria’s state slogan has changed six times since 1977, vacillating between political catchcries and road safety messages as bureaucrats attempted to influence the state’s agenda from the ass of a car. Even though the only place you might see it these days is on the rear of an environmentally un-friendly XD Falcon, the original — Garden State — is still the only slogan that seemed to capture an identity Victorians were proud to screw onto their bumper. Victoria may not be the most pleasant of states, weather-wise, but all that rain means our gardens sure can be lovely. There are 32 botanic gardens in the state, with the crown jewel Royal Botanic Gardens covering 36 hectares in the centre of Melbourne. Then there’s the private gardens, 16 parks, and the herb garden sitting on the window sill of a Southbank apartment. It’s a bloody nice sentiment, Garden State, and one the boys at Sand Hill Road — Doug Maskiell, Tom Birch, and Matt and Andy Mullins — wanted to bring back into the heart of Melbourne with their latest pub, Garden State Hotel.
ALL GROWN UP It’s the group’s tenth venue — seven of which they still own — and while they’ve opened the odd bar, Sand Hill Road’s stock in trade is pubs. Their first was the Commercial Club Hotel in Fitzroy — bought and refurbished 17 years ago by crowdfunding thousand-dollar lots from their mates — and they’ve kept growing the Australian pub concept ever since. “We’re publicans,” explained Matt. “We love the idea that the pub was at the centre of Australian life from the beginning. It was where you went to celebrate or commiserate; go when you needed help or guidance, or needed a meal or drink that you couldn’t afford yourself.” Other than an interstate detour to Rockhampton to revitalise the Heritage Hotel, Sand Hill Road has mostly kept its business to the inner suburbs of Melbourne. For the last 10 years, they haven’t just been renovating pubs, they’ve been rebuilding them and revitalising their identities to better fit the character of those modern inner suburban communities. Whether it meant retrofitting concrete pipe portals into the facade of the Prahran Hotel, or building an entire laneway precinct into the guts of the Bridge Hotel — Sand Hill Road aren’t afraid to do more than simply remove the beer stains, they’re building community hubs around the core elements that make up a pub. But what makes a pub in the CBD? It can’t just be a worker’s lunch drop-in, a happy hour watering hole, a laneway bar, a bistro, or a function space. For a pub to be a pub, it’s got to serve the community in a variety of ways. It’s always been a question floating around Sand Hill Road for seven and
a half years, when they first dared to start looking for an opening in the CBD. It would seem like plenty of time to figure it out, but in the end, it all came down to one night scribbling on a whiteboard. “For years, Zelman Ainsworth (CBRE) — the hardest working letting agent in Melbourne — has been pitching us 150sqm here and there,” said Tom. “We weren’t interested because we were doing larger format venues. Then one day he called Andy and said, ‘I’ve got 750sqm on Flinders Lane on the back of 101, with a 24-hour license. Do I have your attention?!’” That spot ended up having one of the richest hospitality histories in Melbourne. It was previously home to Rosati’s, opened by Piero Gesualdi in 1986 and operated by Melbourne restaurateur godfather, Ronnie di Stasio. “Rosati’s was one of Melbourne’s first super restaurants,” said Matt. “Built on the idea of an Italian railway station bar, you could fit 1000 people in, do breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then bar trade afterwards. It had real pedigree; for people of a certain generation, it was the place.” Rosati’s old glamour had long faded; it had fallen into disrepair and been overtaken by more innovative hospitality offerings. Gesualdi had bought the property off the Commonwealth Property Office Fund (CPA) in 2002 for $3.7m. His intention was to turn it into a 10- to 12-storey boutique hotel to fit under the 40m height limit the CPA imposed at sale to protect the views of its nearby assets. When the Zagame family bought it four years later, they were thinking along the lines of a shopping centre and a 10-level residential or hotel building at the time. Neither came to be, and the property was put up for lease. The boys took a walk through the property just hours after Zelman called. “It was a bloody big restaurant,” said Matt. “If you wanted a restaurant, this was the one.” Be that as it may, they didn’t want a restaurant, they wanted a pub; but you can’t simply pass up an enormous Flinders Lane frontage, backing onto Duckboard Place, in one of the greatest hospitality pockets Melbourne, if not the world, has to offer. That night they started sketching out what they could do with the century old textile factory. “Over the course of the night, what looked like an amazing restaurant suddenly looked like an amazing pub,” recalled Matt. “The epiphany was that we could build something so large and great, but still be a pub,” realised Doug.
GARDEN STATE OF MIND “What we’ve built is a sketch Matt made on the whiteboard the night we convened,” explained Andy, on a tour of the venue. There’s a bricks and mortar reality of delivering on a pub’s promise, and Sand Hill Road have this checklist of non-negotiables memorised. “The
The epiphany was that we could build something so large and great, but still be a pub public bar was always going to be the place you walked into,” began Matt. “There’d be a guy or girl behind the bar who would smile at you, get to know your name, ask you about your day, and really want to know. There was always going to be a beer garden, a bistro or grill, there were going to be function spaces. There was probably going to be a lounge, or second public bar or cocktail bar that served that multi-use purpose. “Those spaces are a bit bigger than what they are in our other pubs, but not much. All in all, it’s a pub. Just like they have been for the past couple of hundred years. More than anything else, it’s a place where members of our community can walk in anytime they like and we get to look after them.” All those elements would eventually find their way onto the sketch, but it’s how you arrange them that counts. The big idea that came out of that night was both their greatest gamble and defining choice. “We were very keen to give the city a park,” continued Andy. “The whole idea was to build the entire venue around a concentric beer garden while maintaining the sawtooth roof.” The sketch showed a public bar at the Flinders Lane entrance, a multi-level tower at the rear, and right in the middle of it all a beer garden taking up an entire third of the ground floor. “In terms of design, we’re talking about mood and what you actually feel when you walk into a place like this, when you sit down and spend a couple of hours here,” said Matt. “We brought that all down to one word, and that was ‘garden’. We wanted people to feel they were in a garden, or walking through a garden to get to the next part of the pub.”
15
Pub DNA: The front bar remained a Sand Hill Road non-negotiable — Garden State Hotel at its heart retains traditional pub values.
When they showed the sketch to their circle of confidants, most thought they were mad to dedicate an entire third of the space to a beer garden. If they were going to build multiple storeys at the rear, why not extend forward and build up the entire floor plan? After all, you could easily slip a beer garden onto the roof like so many other inner city bars. “We were quite hellbent, that’s what makes it a pub — a beer garden on the ground floor,” reiterated Doug. “There are wonderful bars with wonderful rooftop gardens, but they’re not pubs.” “We then took our concept sketches to Justin Northrop at Techne.,” continued Matt. “As always, he bought amazing insights that really layered up the design. With a decade and maybe 20 projects together, we’ve developed a real shorthand between our two companies. That enables us to skip a whole heap of preliminary conversations and get straight into the good stuff.” The beer garden spans two levels, with terraced seating leading down to the basement level Rose Garden cocktail bar. Mature trees are the focal point of the garden — not astroturf — with raised brick garden beds full of lush plants lining the outskirts, and the overhead sawtooth glass roof lending a conservatory feel. “We always started out with pubs with beer gardens, and then we got to problem pubs like the Bridge Hotel,” said Tom. “We had to figure out how to retrofit a garden into that space, so we put in a laneway. We worked out early on that Melbournians are a pretty resilient bunch. If they were warm and dry, then they’d be happy to be outside. It would be a real drawcard. I hesitate to say, but we wouldn’t open any venue without some sort of outdoor space or greenery.” “Because it’s Melbourne, there’s a couple of things we do to keep people dry and warm,” explained Matt. “We end up covering large sections of the horizontal faces of our beer garden, but keep the vertical faces really open. You get a huge amount of ventilation, a lot of natural light
16
and a lot of big clear views up to the sky and the buildings beyond. The other thing we do is put gas heaters bloody everywhere. We’ve got so many Bromic heaters in our beer garden. Everywhere you turn there’s a heater pumping warm air your way. We spent a lot of time with Bromic working out the most efficient way to set up our heaters.”
FERTILE THEME With their great gamble set in stone, the rest of the venue soon found itself entwined in the Garden State theme. The entire public bar has a pergolalike feel, with large wooden uprights bolted to a network of overhead joists and hanging boxes that hold both booze and greenery. Every space is linked to the garden in some way, whether it requires passage through it or occupies part of its view. In all, there’s 2000sqm of floor area, catering to 840 patrons. To the side of the beer garden is an automated kiosk where office workers can get a quick feed by entering their order on a touchscreen, receiving a message when their grub’s up. An open bar channels the tropics with fresh fruit, flowers in cans, and shelves lined with knickknacks complementing the Carribean flair of the turquoise tiling. The rear tower is anchored by the basement level Rose Garden cocktail bar, a more seductive affair with green backlit iron crucifixes hovering over the entrance, rose patterned carpet, and porcelain jugs and vases from your grandma’s collection stocked with rose bouquets. The ripples in the bar’s pink facade mimic the look of velvet from a distance, and the chandeliers and bronze work sit comfortably with the rough, reclaimed Oregon joist wood panelling, exposed brick and rusty steel work in a speakeasy via Charlestonera kinda way. Above the cocktail bar is Garden State Hotel’s main dining area, the New York-inspired Garden Grill, with the Raw Bar serving up freshly
shucked oysters and a smattering of just-caught seafood. Above that, the Balcony Dining Room is the 18-seat private dining room, accessible by lift, that backs directly onto the kitchen. It’s here that head chef Ash Hicks can play with multi-course degustation menus and have the chance to interact with interested parties. Skipping one floor, the top level is a double-height function space for up to 120 called The Observatory, where mesh arches hang from the ceiling and rounded brasswork add to the conservatory feel. While the entire site came with a 24-hour license, the group happily shaped it back to 5am to gain council approval for the build. They never wanted to run it like a nightclub anyway. Most nights finish by 3am, with the exception of the odd major sporting event.
SECRET STAFF GARDEN The fourth floor is probably the best hospitality admin office in Melbourne, with full views of the venue and surrounding cityscape. Further to that, an entire scheme of service corridors and stairwells were installed adjacent to the main thoroughfares so staff can move around behind the scenes. They even installed a skywalk for staff to invisibly convey meals and stock to the public bar from the first floor kitchen, and H&L’s POS system keeps the entire ship connected. “The reason was to make sure the customer experience wasn’t cramped and rushed,” explained Andy. “That it could be a free-flowing, relaxing experience.” Whereas before they’ve been hampered by this pre-existing service networks of heritage pubs, on this occasion, they were able to calculate the public floor area required for max capacity, then increase the build size to encompass more back of house areas then ever before. One of the biggest sacrifices made in the design was the kitchen positioning. It would make logisti-
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The Raw Bar fronts the Garden Grill restaurant and is an oyster lover’s new best friend.
cal sense to put it at the rear of the property, on the ground floor. Load ins would be a doddle and bins easily accessed. However, the rear laneway isn’t just any old dumpster dive, it’s Duckboard Place — home to Tonka, Pastuso, connected to Cherry Bar, and a street art haven. “It’s the kind of laneway Melbourne’s famous for,” said Tom. “We had long discussions about how to give the best spaces in the venue to the public. Our compromise was to bring the kitchen up to the first floor, which wasn’t a compromise in the end, because you’re left with these extraordinary spaces for the public to enjoy. You can have the grand reveal at the front door, or duck in the back way and no one will know you’re here.”
WATCH IT GROW Garden State Hotel is roughly double the capacity of any of Sand Hill Road’s previous pubs, it was also an entirely new build smack bang in the middle of the CBD. Techne Architects and Visual Builders have been constant collaborators with Sand Hill Road for more than a decade, but while Techne remained as the architects, Visual Builders took themselves out of contention for the project, realising it would be a stretch to dedicate their entire company to one job for 15 months. Sand Hill Road had to find another builder capable of pulling it off. “We had a competitive tender process and chose Schiavello,” said Matt. “One of the country’s biggest and most successful family-owned businesses, which we love. It’s a decision that’s paid off in spades. They understand our needs and what it is we’re trying to create here, and helped us deliver.” “Sitting at the table with Chris Schiavello, and Lee and Dave who worked on the project side, we instantly had a rapport,” recalled Tom. “When you’re going to spend 15-17 months together — let alone the amount of money that’s involved — you need to know you’re going to be able to get on
We were quite hellbent, that’s what makes it a pub — a beer garden on the ground floor with them, and have trust and good faith.” Over those 15 months, 420 truckloads of debris were taken out of the back roller door, and 645 builders and contractors signed into the site, with more working offsite. It’s a lot of trucks, cranes and workers to keep out of your neighbour’s hair, especially when you’ve got the fourth tallest office building in Australia on your doorstep, residents at the rear and completely surrounded by laneways full of operating businesses. With the heritage facade remaining intact, the entire innards of the old building was stealthily demolished and removed from inside. “We did a complete demo of the building with the existing roof on,” said Doug. “It wasn’t until the roof came off, that anyone knew what was happening — except our wonderful friends at Pastuso, who were very patient.” There was one moment of panic. Not long before opening, the newpapers reported a couple of Banksy street art pieces in Duckboard Place had been lost to demolition. Horrified that it could have been them, a flurry of Sunday morning
phone calls let the boys breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn’t them; all their demo had been done 18 months earlier. “I was constantly in awe of Schiavello who had to wrangle it all,” said Matt. “There were 30-odd days of cranes between Flinders Lane and Duckboard Place.”
LIVE & LEARN With roughly double the number of patrons, there was also a rash of new hires. Sand Hill Road has a mantra: ‘Laugh, learn, live, love life’. “If we four partners are sticking to those, the business runs really well,” explained Doug. “The more work we put into each other and not directly into the business, it booms because everyone around us picks up and gets on with it.” Likewise, they’re always looking for staff who innately ascribe to the same values. As Matt put it: “Business is not about P&Ls. It’s necessary, you’ve got to keep a close eye on it and be the best at it, but it’s not what it’s about.” “For us, service is what you do,” explained Doug. “Every staff member that comes to work for us can already do the nuts and bolts — carry plates, make cocktails. The cultural side of the hospitality part of is what really matters. You can’t necessarily train that, you have it or you don’t.” Their desire to keep the Sand Hill Road culture intact begins right at the door. Their pubs have always strived to prioritise locals and they want to keep it that way, but a large capacity makes it incredibly difficult to identify regular patrons. With that in mind, half a dozen of the group’s cream-ofthe-crop greeters now work in Garden State Hotel’s public bar, trying to pick up on who’s a regular as quickly as possible. Having a line out the front of Garden State Hotel isn’t an aim, but it’s a byproduct of being popular, so they always keep headroom in their capacity to be able to shuffle regulars in as soon as they arrive.
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We were very keen to give the city a park HICKSVILLE Flinders Lane has become the centre of the cool food movement in Melbourne. Within 100m of Garden State Hotel are Supernormal, Coda, Cumulus, Chin Chin, Tonka, Pastuso, Lee Ho Fook, Mo Vida, Gazi — exceptional food and beverage. “We thought by putting a pub in the middle of that might tie the area together in a neat bow,” said Matt. “It also changed what we thought we had to put out from our kitchen,” said Tom. “All those restaurants have amazing chefs, which is why we were after a chef like Ash Hicks to take us to that next level.” Ash Hicks has worked in a number of great restaurants, both in Australia and London, and spent the last four years bringing Circa, the Prince back up to two hats. He’s a great fine dining chef who was ready for a change; the opportunity to bring faster, perhaps more fun food, to a larger audience. “He’s an amazing talent and he shared the same vision for the future of great casual dining,” explained Matt. It wasn’t just the food that had to reach a new level, every other area of the pub needed fresh expertise, including down the back in the cocktail bar. The four of them have spent years travelling the world and tasting cocktails for ‘work’, yet one of their favourites sits just 100m from their door, Eau de Vie. “We got lucky,” said Matt. “Kevin [Peters] had spent a couple of years running the bar program there, was looking for something new and applied for a job. We’d drunk Kevin’s drinks before and loved them.” Managing a venue as large as Garden State also required new operating expertise, and a new general manager. They searched for someone with “fine dining and large venue, late night experience, and someone who shared our values,” explained Matt. Initially, they couldn’t find that person, so they asked Marcus Mooney if he could fill the gap. He’s been through most of the major pub groups in the country and had a lot of experience with QSR, but his recent move into ownership meant he couldn’t take on the role full time. He agreed to jump onboard for two months, then handed over to Dan Viney, who was able to bring his experience to the table too. “The people we’ve employed are the top of their game, but their true genius is being able to talk about their passion at an accessible level to whoever they’re talking to,” said Doug. “They can dumb it down for people like me!”
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We’re risking everthing and we wouldn’t have it any other way All four acknowledge it has been and will continue to be a massive learning curve for them and their business. But as Tom put it in Pokemon Go parlance, “we’re levelling up. We know we’re much better operators now and Sand Hill Road is so much better off, not only for having this new site, but for having all this new expertise. People that genuinely love hospitality will have a flow-on effect to the rest of our business.”
BITE OFF & KEEP CHEWING Sand Hill Road has gone all-in on Garden State Hotel. All their finances are tied up in the multimillion dollar project, and Matt says they could have pulled up stumps a week earlier but kept working on it right until opening day. “We’re risking everything, and we wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Matt. “If this was just another incremental one, we’d be looking for something else to sink our teeth into. We’re classic entrepreneurs; we like to bite off a hell of a lot more than we can chew, then chew like our lives depended on it.” It’s everything Sand Hill Road has been working towards, and brings a whole different sense of community to the CBD. It’s still a pub. You can still get Carlton Draught on tap, pumped direct from their unpasteurised vats, but you can also snag a top-end cocktail or a $60 lamb shoulder. Best of all, like every other Sand Hill Road venue, Garden State Hotel embraces the Karma Keg tradition of donating Friday night happy hour proceeds to local causes. In three and a half years that’s come to around half a million dollars, more than just a shade of green.
CONTACTS Techne¯ Architecture + Interior Design: (03) 9600 0222 or info@techne.com.au Schiavello Constructions: (03) 9330 8888 or info@schiavello.com Bromic (Heating): (02) 9426 5222 or info@bromicheating.com.au Ayus Botanical (Landscaping): (03) 9376 9311 or info@ayusbotanical.com Marshall Day (Acoustic Engineers): (03) 9416 1855 or au.marshallday.com Light Project (Lighting Consultant): (03) 8415 1970 or info@lightproject.com.au H&L Australia (POS systems): 1300 797 638 or www.hlaustralia.com.au RTR Productions (Audio): (03) 9331 6522 or info@rtrproductions.com.au
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Real Deal: The Rose Garden cocktail bar (top) has its own additional back-alley, Duckboard Lane access, and ticks all the Melbourne small bar boxes. Upstairs, the double-height, 120-cap function space is called The Observatory (below).
“Our experience with New England Constructions has been second to none. Their attention to detail and unwavering commitment to the delivery schedule without comprising quality is a testament to the company’s ability. They have exceeded our expectations and we look forward to working with New England Constructions again.”
Justin Malouf Partner, Royal Hotels Group
COMMERCIAL BUILDER OF THE YEAR 2016 Master Builders Association South East NSW
Ph: (02) 9369 1241 www.newenglandconstructions.com.au
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Comfort & Choice: The lounge bar is large and inviting with its range of seating options. There are 19 beers on tap — the craft varieties go especially well on a Sunday afternoon.
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housands upon thousands of new homes. Way out west, near where Sydney’s M5 runs into the M7, a new suburb has sprouted. It’s called Gregory Hills, and it’s attracting middle class families seeking homes they can afford. The subdivision is joined by an industrial estate along with a private medical centre… and now a large, well-appointed pub. “We looked at the site five years ago and it was a paddock,” noted Justin Malouf. It’s accurate to say that the Malouf brothers’ (Jamie, Justin and Ed) Royal Hotel Group got in early. Recognising the opportunity, the developers worked with the group to include a prime corner site for a pub into the masterplan. The council also recognised the importance of such a venue and the pub was quickly given the go-ahead without fuss. “Three years on, the housing estate went crazy,” continued Justin. Crazy is right. Within one kilometre of the pub are some 15,000 houses. And word has it that within eight years there will be another 30,000 homes within a eight kilometre radius. What’s more, Sydney’s second airport will be finally established only 4.5km away — yes, I know, I’ll believe it when I see it too. So to say this is a ‘growth corridor’ is an understatement.
A PUB OF TWO HALVES The Maloufs are experienced, astute operators. They’ve been running pubs for quite some time with a portfolio that includes the Royal Oak in Double Bay, Wattle Grove Hotel, and the Caves Beachside Hotel north of Sydney. They knew exactly the pub they needed for the area. Or, as project architect Ania Bergstrom put it with some admiration: “the Maloufs knew exactly what they wanted and drove the design from the beginning.” What they wanted was a pub comprised of, effectively, two distinct venues — connected but separate. Justin Malouf: “The brief was for a big western suburbs-style pub with a top quality fitout. Ideally it’d be two pubs within one — the sports and gaming section on one side and the family and lounge/ entertainment/food on the other side.” It’d need to be a big pub, one that could accommodate an influx of families on the weekend. And food would be the prime driver. Such a large build needed experience in the construction phase. “We were extremely happy with our architect and construction partners, Bergstrom and New England Constructions,” noted Jamie Malouf. “We gave New England Constructions a very clear and specific deadline and they built the pub ahead of time and on budget. It was a very headache-free process.” “We were very keen on hitting the right date and they were amazing,” concurred Ed Malouf. “It went from paddock to finished venue in nine months, which is incredible really.” “To build 180 car spaces and a nearly 2500sqm hotel in nine months is pretty damn good,” agreed Jamie. “Every day counts from our point of view.” Gregory Hills Hotel was delivered under a Construction Management (CM) arrangement. It’s a different approach and one we’re likely to see more of. CM allows the client maximum flexibility in the design and to respond to market trends. In this case, the project was able to start early while detailed interior design documentation was being completed, therefore allowing the hotel to open months ahead of a conventional ‘lump sum, hard dollars’ tender process The CM arrangement provides a high level of transparency and flexibility while minimising the cost exposure. Often when projects go out to tender the builder provides a price with little room to move — changes result in variations and friction regarding costs. Ultimately this is the biggest
benefit of a CM arrangement in that it defuses those client/builder tensions, allowing changes to happen seamlessly with minimum cost exposure. Ed Malouf again: “The project was delivered four weeks ahead of schedule as promised, the budget was maintained as promised and the level of quality exceeded what was promised. New England Constructions is a builder you can trust who operates with integrity and commitment.” High praise, indeed.
a NEW ENGLAND CONSTRUCTIONS project
YIN & YANG OF BIG PUB DESIGN & OPS Touring the new pub with GM John Payne, it’s really quite an awesome operation to behold. All the Fantasy Big Modern Pub boxes have been ticked: Two principal entrances access the two key halves of the hotels. The ‘restricted’ side is more opulent with a water feature and access to the TAB sports bar and the Paul Kelly-designed gaming room. On the opposite side of the building, a familyfriendly entrance marches straight into the cavernous, shared bistro and lounge bar area. Carlton Fresh beer tanks greet you at the door overhead, directing your vision to the vaulted ceiling with the contrasting colour of the beams providing some definition and perspective. There is a panoply of seating alternatives — high and low, plush and timber — supplied by BSeated, Cafe Culture and Prototype. An EcoSmart ethanol fireplace sits centrally to further break up the large interior volume, and the adjacent chesterfields are a perfect complement. “You might think the job of selecting the furniture could be given to a junior in the office,” observed Ania Bergstrom. “But that’s impossible. There are expectations around durability, lead times, looks, feel… if it doesn’t feel right no one will use it. We ensure our clients sit on a sample… kick it, move it, really test it to make sure their expectations are met. I’m really happy with our choice.”
ENGINE ROOM The engine room of the operation is the kitchen. It’s comprised of a two-line, double conveyor belt system with prep area, four combi ovens, pizza maker, separate wash area, walk-in cool room, walk-in freezer… More than 20 staff keep it zinging in peak time. And it’s been zinging. Only two weeks young when venue first visited, the Gregory Hills Hotel was enjoying a baptism of fire. Busy all week but absolutely teeming on the weekend, customers were happily joining 20m queues to order lunch — “customer feedback was the service was great, even if the wait was unavoidable,” said John. The CUB Fresh beer move has paid off. The hotel goes through two tanks a week along with a futher 70 kegs of beer a week. There are 19 beers on tap including six craft varieties that go particularly well on Sunday afternoons.
LADIES FIRST The pub has been designed with families in mind: The ladies’ bathroom has a generous eight cubicles. The unisex bathroom/baby changing room has a regularly changed nappy disposal unit. The pub has invested in a jumpy castle, which they inflate and staff on a weekend. There is an outdoor kids’ play area with plenty of seating for parents to relax and supervise. The Nightlife Music playlist is big on non-confronting family favourites and there’s a strict ‘no DJ’ policy. There’s a stage in the alfresco area where a cover band will entertain the whole family on a monthly basis (first cab off the rank was a Pink cover band which had 30-odd kids dancing around in delight). The alfresco areas are vast and generously heated by dozens of Bromic units — gas,
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We knew the market was there but didn’t think they’d all hit our hotel in the first few weeks ALFRESCO HEATING OPTIONS Gas or electricity? Depends. The outdoor areas of the Gregory Hills Hotel is vast and hugely important to the pub’s operations. Maintaining patrons’ comfort in cooler months or in a stiff breeze is crucial, so selecting the right heater and the right position for the heaters was crucial as well. The two main outdoor heater types are gas and radiant electrical. Both have their pros and cons and both are used at the Gregory Hills Hotel. In the more exposed areas the pub has installed Bromic electrical/infra-red heaters. They’re quite energy efficient and being radiant thermal heating, as opposed to convection heating, they provide the same natural heat effect as the sun, warming people and objects rather than air. Bromic radiant heaters produce a soft, ambient light and are safe to mount under shade sails, umbrellas and timber awnings. These radiant heaters also contain a quartz element, which means that heat can be controlled by movement sensors, eliminating the need for staff to constantly turn them on and off. Given Australia’s coastal climate, it’s imperative that outdoor radiant heaters are
Great Outdoors: Alfresco drinking and dining is key to the venue’s success. An outdoor stage provides a focus for big-game and live entertainment. Bromic heating ensures year-round comfort.
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wind and water resistant — such as anticorrosive aluminium or steel. Elsewhere, the venue has used Bromic Platinum Smart Heat Gas heaters, which are slim, streamlined and have a brushed stainless steel finish. The burners are protected behind high-temperature translucent ceramic, which not only shields flames from wind, but also transforms the obtrusive red glare emitted by traditional natural gas heating burners into a warm red blur. The Platinum Smart Heat Gassoftened glow doesn’t compromise heat output, either. The three-burner Smart Heat Gas (Platinum 300) has a range of up to 12sqm and a heat output of 25MJ, and the five-burner Platinum 500 has a range of up to 20sqm and a heat output of 42MJ. The heater’s wall mount allows management to pivot and direct the heat as desired. What’s more, despite being gas heaters, they have electric ignition — one or multiple units can be switched on and off simultaneously from a single remote-located switch. Bromic: (02) 9426 5222 or www.bromic.com.au
THE PADDINGTON
Merivale Group, Sydney
24 Moons Alumbra The Arthouse Hotel Australian Outback Spectacular The Bank Hotel The Botanical Bungalow 8 Brisbane Hotel (Perth) Club Marconi Discovery Establishment Half Moon Hornsby RSL Ivy Katuk Kudu Lounge Luxe Bar The Mean Fiddler The Met Oxford Art Factory Slip Inn
electrical/infra-red depending on the location — for year-round comfort. The pub is a masterclass in contemporary family pub design. The bistro and lounge bar is super family friendly but not at the expense of style and adult utility — at no point do you feel you’ve walked into a ‘McDonalds with beer’. The adult side of the venue, with the smart yet conservatively-themed sports bar and the glamorous gaming area, is an oasis in itself. It’s the yin and yang of big suburban pubs and clubs and the Gregory Hills Hotel looks to have found the exact right balance.
DEEP END The Gregory Hills Hotel team has learnt a lot about itself and its freshly-minted venue in a very short time. It feels that there isn’t a single man, woman, child and pet in the postcode who hasn’t dropped by to check if it’s a pub they can call their own. Pub management has done its best to please while recognising it wasn’t attempting to be the trendiest place in town (sorry 18-25 year olds, but at least you’ve got a great parma ’n’ pot staging post before hitting the town). The pinch points were illuminated immediately (getting the meals ordered, prepared and taken to table more quickly has been the main biggest challenge) and the blow torch was applied to staff — demonstrating who was in it for the long haul.
venue asked Ed and Jamie Malouf if they were surprised by the initial numbers. Ed Malouf: It’s certainly showed there there was the demand. A new suburb needs a hotel. Jamie Malouf: We knew the market was there but didn’t think they’d all hit our hotel in the first few weeks! We’re also aware that we’re not the only place in town, and as the population keeps growing there’s scope for other hospitality options. Ed: It has thrown us into the deep end. It’s been important that we listen to the community so they’ve got buy-in — this is the community’s pub. Jamie: Operationally, the pub works well. When it’s really busy, when you have lots of staff on, with plenty of security, good direction of managers — particularly in the bistro when there’s a 20m line and you need to keep people’s patience — the pub really sings. Ed: Even though there’s just one bar in the bistro/ lounge area there are plenty of service points. The main stress point has been the food and the kitchen. We’re working on that and now we’re aware of the demand, it’s about being ready.
see it on:
vimeo.com/venuemag
CONTACTS New England Constructions: (02) 9369 1241 or www.newenglandconstructions.com.au Bergstrom Architects: (02) 8920 1499 or www.bergstromarchitects.com.au
Two Halves: The bistro and lounge bar occupy one side of the venue, while the Sports Bar (centre) and gaming lounge form the other, each with their own entrance.
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a RAMVEK project
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ports tragics, theatre luvvies and pollies. It’s an eclectic hospitality eco system, certainly not a combination of patrons you’d necessarily target in a ‘back of a beer coaster’ business plan. Melbourne’s Imperial Hotel stands opposite the state houses of parliament and is a couple of doors down from the Princess Theatre which accounts for a healthy chunk of the patronage. But how did it get such an enviable reputation as a sports lovers’ venue? As it happens, it was down to the ingenuity of manager Steve Marrs. Steve reached out to some of the fringe sports fans — ie. not the AFL fans. For starters, he’s a Pom (albeit an Australianbased Pom since 2002) so he knew the pain of missing the EPL. “I offered to open the pub to the Liverpool FC fan club in Melbourne so they could watch a match live at 3am,” recalled Steve. Group COO, Craig Ellison, also recalls the phone call from Steve suggesting the unusual opening hours: “‘How much is that going to cost me?!’ was my first question. Steve said he’d fly solo and keep the costs to a minimum. So the first game had four supporters, who told four of their friends and on it went.” It certainly snowballed from there. Without any promotion, other than some word of mouth recommendations between fan clubs, The Imperial Hotel is known by every sports nut in town. “We’ve got every single broadcast ‘box’ possible in the back room,” notes Craig. “There’s nothing Steve can’t and won’t show. We’ll even log onto a live stream if necessary.” “Only recently we had a group of Scandinavians asking if we’d open for the broadcast of a downhill skiing competition,” continues Steve. The answer? ‘Yes’, of course. “This job is about relationships, and building those links with the sports fan clubs has been a great investment.”
SPORTING CHANCE So is The Imperial a ‘sports bar’ or a pub that takes its sport seriously? Definitely the latter. The day I met Craig and Steve on site coincided
with the season opener of the NFL in the US. The front bar had a contingent of 30-odd fans around midday barracking on their teams. But there wasn’t any incongruity or intrusion as a result; patrons in the pub’s dining room happily co-exist with the fanboys. Upstairs a small group of Spring Street bureaucrats were using some of the function space. Later in the evening 100 covers were booked in upstairs (the function space doubles as extra dining), allowing pre-theatre patrons to be one step removed from the front bar if they desire. It all demonstrates just how flexible the pub now is and how it can allow the unusual eco system to flourish. And we’ve not even touched on the new rooftop bar yet!
PUB FUNDAMENTALS For group COO, Craig Ellison, catering equally to the sports nut, pollie or patron of the arts wasn’t his biggest concern; it was ensuring the refurb maintained the solid pub DNA. “The design challenge was to not lose the pub feel,” observed Craig Ellison. “That was my fear with this refurb. For example, I was deeply worried about the new beer fonts — I’m not now, they’re great — that they might detract from the pub feel.” The architect was Newline Design’s Jon Mikulich. Jon had worked with the Dixon Group and the builder Ramvek on both the Duke and the Crafty Squire (both featured in venue). “Jon’s done a good job, I’m impressed,” enthused Craig. “He’s managed to nail it. This refit is nothing like the Crafty or The Duke — I wanted The Imperial to be totally different proposition designwise — and he’s nailed that as well.”
HIT THE ROOF The first piece of the refurb puzzle was a new rooftop bar. Previously unactivated space, the bar now attracts yet another demographic to The Imperial — young ladies. The area is entirely non-smoking, comfortable and not overbearingly blokey in design. “I was all set to put a large-screen TV up there,”
recalls Craig Ellison. “It was Steve Marrs who convinced me not to. The screen was ordered and paid up but we cancelled it and it was the best thing we did. Even when the rest of the pub was a worksite we’d have groups of ladies, dressed to the nines, filing their way up the elevator to head to the rooftop. It’s been a revelation.” The rooftop bar was a hit the day it opened. Manager Steve Marrs explains: “I don’t know how many tens of thousands of office workers can look down and see our rooftop bar, but they were all tracking its progress. When it opened we were instantly full.” The rooftop provides bar snacks and a range of tap beer, served from repurposed shipping containers — evoking an exciting, hawker-style environment. Bromic gas heaters take the edge off the cool of the Melbourne evenings while soon-to-be installed awnings will provide some relief from the brutal mid Summer sun. “Heat and cold aren’t an issue for Melburnians,” observes Steve Marrs. “People will sit out regardless. It’s the rain that brings people back indoors.”
CRANE DELIVERY The rooftop also proved to be a godsend for Ramvek during the construction phase. Project Manager, Adrian Savage, picks up on the story: “This was by far the most difficult build of the three recent Dixon jobs [The Duke and the Crafty Squire being the others]: For starters, it’s a rebuild rather than a refit — including adding a whole new level in the rooftop; the pub had to keep trading throughout; and there were some very limiting access issues — it’s on a busy corner site with power lines… including tram line power, everywhere. “Quite often we used the rooftop to supply materials for the refit — using a crane to drop a week’s worth of supplies. The issue was we only had a short window of time on a Saturday morning for the crane to make the dropoff. If it was raining or if the wind had picked up, we could lose our window of opportunity and be a week behind schedule.”
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Fortunately the weather was kind to Ramvek and the construction kept motoring, allowing them to meet a tight deadline. “I really applied the thumb screws to Ramvek on this one,” recalls Craig Ellison. “The deadline was very tight — too tight in retrospect. Ask any other builder and they just wouldn’t believe what Ramvek was able to achieve in that time. And it simply wouldn’t have been possible unless the builder was totally onboard and the contractors as well. It’s the most challenging reno we’ve done yet and Ramvek rose to the challenge.”
BACK IN THE SWING The Imperial is a pub in the most traditional sense of the word. Pubs cut through the accepted hospitality delineations of age, gender and occupation — a good pub is for everyone. “We’re budgeting on a sizeable increase in trade here at The Imperial,” says Craig Ellison. “And we’re expecting that because, thanks to the rooftop, we’ve increased the pub’s capacity, and we’re allowing the pub to get on with being a pub with improvements to the bars and kitchen. There are pub fundamentals, and by getting those right you’ll reap the rewards — simple is best but do it well.” Now Pouring: With its use of timber panelling, framed portraits and dark tones, the dining room has all the hallmarks of a traditional pub yet the furniture choices, wall lights and the steel mesh panels on the columns give the space some contemporary funkiness as well. Upstairs (right) there is a versatile space that can be used for functions or as additional dining and can be broken down into three separate areas. The AV was again taken care of by the resourceful chaps from the Disco Doctors.
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CONTACT: Ramvek: (03) 9794 9342 or ramvek.com.au Newline Design: (03) 9521 4144 or www.newlinedesign.com.au Bromic: www.bromic.com.au Disco Doctors: 0423 141 384 or www.discodoctors.com.au
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he Newport sits nestled at the gateway to an exclusive Northern Beaches spit that includes Avalon and Palm Beach. It’s a big suburban pub that’s somewhat of a rarity in this part of the world. It’s also an institution; a truly iconic piece of hospitality — everyone has heard of the The Newport. Certainly Justin Hemmes had. It was part of the Merivale family lore when he was a kid. His dad, a spearfishing aficionado, would bring his bountiful catch to the The Newport Arms (as it was called) and sell it to locals while Justin’s mum would take cuttings from the garden to be propagated and planted back at their city apartment. Last year the opportunity arose to buy the pub and Justin took it. The reality is, any significant pub operator (with the requisite ~$50m to play with) would dearly love The Newport — arguably the jewel in the crown of any hospitality portfolio. Refitting The Newport is a big job, even for Merivale. Justin and his team have initially turned their attention to the outdoor areas. Justin and his sister Bettina are joined by a regular design team that includes Kelvin Ho and Emilie Delalande of Akin Creative along with stylist Amanda Talbot. Between them they’ve created a beautifully landscaped environment for locals and visitors to relax, grab a bite and find a spot to enjoy the views over the Pittwater estuary. The casual dining options have been masterminded by Executive Chef Sebastien Lutaud. Guests can journey through a diverse marketplace of food and drink experiences, enjoying a burger from The Burger Shack; fresh seafood including classic fish and chips, salt and pepper calamari and crispy basil prawns; seasonal salads and exceptional Australian meats like smoked brisket, barbeque chicken and hot-smoked salmon; fresh juices and smoothies from The Juice Bar; and freshly-brewed coffee, pastries and donuts at The Kiosk. The Newport is also home to Vinnie’s Pizza, where Merivale’s own pizza superstar Vincenzo Biondini whips up his lightly-charred, wood-fired creations in the open kitchen.
if we have the resources, especially personnel resources, to take on more, then we do. We grow organically because of that –Justin Hemmes
JUSTIN HEMMES INTERVIEW venue chatted with Justin Hemmes about his plans
for The Newport. venue: Unlike the south of the city, big North Shore pubs are few and far between. Did you approach The Newport’s relaunch with a different mindset? Justin Hemmes: No, I didn’t actually look at it like that. We look at a venue and its surrounds and the potential clientele, and then we develop the pub for those people. If we do a nice job then other people will come. It’s a simple approach and a local approach. And when I say ‘local’, I’m thinking of our city venues as much as our suburban ones. It’s the same approach. We look at the location, who’s around us and whether it’s offices or houses, it’s the same philosophy. We design it for them. Coogee Pavilion was the same. We went into Coogee, which is a great community but there was not much happening there, so we built something that suits that community and it’s had a fabulous response. That’s our plan for Newport. venue: What are you changing about The Newport and what’s staying the same? Justin Hemmes: The outdoor area is a very important part of the venue, so that is the first stage we have addressed. There’s a lot of landscaping, a lot more furniture, shade as well because it’s very hot there in summer. But it’s really about creating different environments to sit in, as opposed to one large space. We’ve tried to break it down into different experiences and different environments. There’s a wide choice of food outlets, so the new outdoor area has an outdoor market feel to reflect that. It’s as if you’re going into a lovely public space where you can choose the food you want to eat and bring it back to where you want to sit.
Beer Garden Extraordinaire: The Newport’s outdoor area has been transformed into a multi-dimensional garden of dining and drinking delights. The landscaping puts most botanical gardens to shame. The level of comfort is utterly superb.
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POWER & RESPONSIBILITY
NEWPORT AUDIO: NO DEADSPOTS
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No Dead Spots: this is the Justin Hemmes mantra when it comes to Merivale audio. Justin takes a keen personal interest in the music and audio and as a result it needs to be factored into any renovation from an early stage. Head of Merivale AV is Glenn Rayner whose job it is to ensure the challenge is met. Long-time audio confidant (and Technical Director of Technical Audio Group), Anthony Russo, played a pivotal role in the design, while the meticulous install was the work of Tyson Nieplet of Customised Technical Solutions (CTS), the main AV integrator. Most large venue installations will use constant voltage amp and loudspeaker systems. The advantage of such a setup is you can daisychain speakers, making it easy to install and far more cost effective — one amp channel for multiple speakers; one cable for multiple speakers. The downside is a serious lack of granular control — turn one speaker down and you turn down the others that share that 100V line amp. Furthermore, you don’t enjoy any stereo imaging. To get that granular control — where you can individually alter the level and EQ of each loudspeaker — requires individual amps and processing channels. This goes some way to understanding the Merivale approach to the audio. But it doesn’t entirely explain why there are just so many loudspeakers. Actually this is easy to explain: Justin will walk the space and if he detects a spot that’s not enjoying the same quality of audio, then he’ll point to the spot — remember the mantra: ‘no dead spots’! — and ask for another loudspeaker to be installed to fill the hole. Having no dead spots also means there aren’t any ‘hot spots’ where certain speakers are run harder to attain coverage. In fact, the coverage is as even as you’ll ever hear. It doesn’t matter where you sit — at a bar, at a table, on a retaining wall, in the garden — you’ll enjoy a full and immersive stereo sound. It’s really quite extraordinary. The Martin Audio loudspeakers won a ‘shootout’ prior to installation and it’s easy to see why. The Martin CDD coaxial loudspeaker design is perfect for hospitality installs such as this. Because it’s coaxial — with the HF unit mounted into the centre of the LF device — you can install the speaker in a landscape (ie. on its side) or portrait orientation and you maintain the same highly coherent sound quality. When you mount a traditional twoway speaker in landscape mode you can detect a slight erosion of the sound quality because you’re hearing the sound from the tweeter slightly after the woofer (or vice versa) — not so when the two (coaxial) drivers occupy the same position in space. The dispersion pattern of the Martin CDD design is intentionally non-symmetrical. It means there’s a wider dispersion pattern for those close to the speaker (say, around 120°) and narrower for those more distant (~80°). The advantage of this approach is a far more consistent delivery of HF, regardless of the listening distance.
The granular approach to the audio design is made possible thanks to a very powerful digital signal processing brain. Two QSC Q-SYS Core 1100s (one for backup/redundancy purposes) run the show. They act like an audio control tower, ensuring audio sources are sent to the right speaker at the right level and with the best possible processing. Out of the Core the digital audio is routed via category cable to Hewlett Packard IT switches which in turn direct traffic to the networked QSC CXD Q Network amplifiers. If you think it all sounds more like a computer network than an audio system, you’d be right but the advantages of such an approach are many and various. The degree of control and monitoring is astonishing. Glenn Rayner can log into the Q-SYS Core, take a bird’s eye view of the system and indeed use a mouse to hover over any point and ‘hear’ the audio at that node. This makes troubleshooting a breeze for such a large audio network. If something’s disconnected or a component is blown the Q-SYS Core will tell you. CTS’s rack cabling is a work of art, everything is fastidiously terminated and documented. Apart from the result being a jaw-droppingly neat rack, it ensures the system is just as easy to work with on Day 5000 as it is on Day 1 — long after current AV managers and techs move on, future techs will quickly be able to determine what they’re dealing with.
GARDEN STAGE The Newport garden features a fully-fledged performance stage. The audio comprises eight Martin MLA Mini elements a side, with two MLA Mini subs a side. Each MLA box is bi-amped and individually addressed by a QSC amp channel (some 40 channels of amplification are devoted to the stage alone). Addressing each speaker in this way allows the audio designer to ‘steer’ the sound down, using time domain processing, helping to constrain the throw of most of the PA’s frequency content to 25 metres. It’s a lovely sounding rig and one that any visiting musician would be happy to plug into. Live music is a regular weekend fixture at The Newport. A rack has been prepared that’s easily wheeled to side of stage and with one Cat5 connection plugged into the system. Onboard is an Allen & Heath Qu16 digital mixer, along with a handful of wireless mic channels. The beauty of the approach is the venue is totally self sufficient for the vast majority of events — no need to hire in a PA and/or operator — and the ‘one-connection’ setup preconfigures the rest of the venue’s loudspeaker zones to accommodate the live performance. Saying that, regardless of whether the stage PA is stretching its legs or not, all 200+ loudspeakers throughout the rest of the venue are time-delayed, using the stage PA as ‘time zero’. This might sound like a slightly pernickety point to make but this attention to detail ensures there are no disconcerting echoes, where you’re hearing the stage PA slightly later than the loudspeaker right next to you. It all contributes to the beautifully immersive sonic experience that’s so important to Justin Hemmes. Technical Audio Group (Martin Audio, QSC, Allen & Heath): (02) 9519 0900 or www.tag.com.au Customised Technical Solutions: (02) 8068 7684 or www.custechsol.com.au
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venue: Somewhat like an outdoor version of the Coogee Pavilion experience? Justin Hemmes: Coogee is much more of a restaurant environment where you’re sitting down and you’re enjoying table service etc. That is still to come at The Newport, but this first stage is more like going to a park to graze — you can go to one stall and get your lunch from there, or go to many stalls and get many different types of food. So the first stage is different to Coogee. But Stage 2 will be more of a restaurant experience. venue: Can you give our readers a sense of what a Merivale planning meeting is like when you’re approaching the new direction of a huge undertaking such as this? Justin Hemmes: I normally have a concept in mind before I buy a venue — it may not be set in stone, but it’s largely defined in my head. I then discuss it with the relevant people within the group and bounce the ideas off them. They can add their input and then I get my sister and the architects involved and then we really nut it out at that point. The journey can take many different directions — where we start is not necessarily where we end, but it gives us the initial direction. We would certainly look at the history of the site, I think that’s important; and the community. We don’t just go off on our own tangent. It’s about being respectful to future customers and what we think they’re going to enjoy. venue: What’s the dynamic between you, your sister and the architect? Justin Hemmes: It’s very casual. We just all get along well — everyone’s equal; we all put our two bob’s worth and we have a meeting of minds.
SCALING UP
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venue: What’s been the public’s response to The Newport’s relaunch? Justin Hemmes: Fantastic. A flying start. Obviously we had a beautiful autumn and then we had those terrible Sydney storms which knocked us about, but we’re prepping up for a really good spring and summer. We’ve got fantastic staff too. They’re all local staff and they’ve been amazing — really engaged and involved; they take ownership, which is great.
venue: That relates to my next question about how Merivale has grown exponentially over the last three to five years, and how you scale up as a business, maintaining quality while also maintaining that Merivale signature, which is very much about your personal touch and style. Justin Hemmes: Well, myself and my sister, we live and breathe it. We’re incredibly involved. We’ve got wonderful staff and great leaders that have been with us for a long time and we work closely with them. We’ve got a fabulous team and it’s very much an organic process. What’s more, it’s very much opportunity- and resource-driven: if we have the resources, especially personnel resources, to take on more, then we do. We grow organically because of that. venue: But there must be times in recent years where you’ve felt stretched? Justin Hemmes: Every opening is like the first opening! Every opening feels like the first time. I have great people around me: a great team, great support and in the end we grow organically. We’re not pressured to grow. We don’t have criteria we need to meet. It’s a family business and it’s about taking on jobs that reflect the quality of what we want to offer as a group, and we only take on jobs that fit into our portfolio and our direction. venue: When you take over a venue there’s now a phenomenon something like a ‘Merivale Effect’ on a suburb, like we’ve seen with Coogee and Paddington? Is that something you consider? Justin Hemmes: When we buy a site and invest substantial amounts of money into a site, we’re investing into the community, and our goal on a hospitality level is to create something that benefits the community. And if we’re successful in that, we also benefit real estate values, but that’s just part of doing a good job and achieving our goals. It’s a great little flow-on effect, and I sometimes have people come up to me in Coogee and ‘say thank you for putting our property prices up!’. On a more serious note, we genuinely want to improve the facilities of the community and we invest heavily in that — we invest our time and money and effort into doing that — and if we get it right, there’s great flow-on effects.
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The Gregory Hills Hotel. Paul Kelly Design has created another first with the Gregory Hills Hotel. This is more than a destination — get ready for an experience.
GAMING THE SYSTEM The Gregory Hills Hotel gaming room is sophisticated and highly functional. Designer Paul Kelly reveals the art and science (and a dash of feng shui) behind the comfort and glamour. Story: Paul Kelly
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a PAUL KELLY DESIGN project
W
hen we came into the Gregory Hills Hotel it was basically a box and a small box at that, maybe about 150sqm. The first thing we needed to do was expand the room. We have certain spacings we use between machines and for walkways that we know will work, so we had to blow some sections of the room out and cut off some walkways to make the room suit what we wanted as far as the flow. In other words, the size of the space matters for the principles to work. One of the key things for us is the flow through the room: letting people walk past the machines while not interrupting players, so there’s a river of energy that runs through. All the rooms are based on feng shui, and on the concept of customers feeling very safe and secure: everyone can see everything. It’s not dark because people walk into these rooms with money so we maintain excellent sightlines and good light levels — patrons must feel comfortable enough to put money in the machines and stay in the room. Gaming is not just about playing the machines, it’s about the whole experience: the room, the other players, the buzz — it’s an escape, like going on a holiday or cruise. We have to take people on this journey, that’s how we get them to stay. Interior design is key to this. Our work now has an opulent resort feel — the old rooms where you had black ceilings, fussy carpet and wallpaper… that’s all finished; anything too Asian in feel is finished; anything that’s highly themed is well and truly finished.
FULLY DECKED When we determine the flow of a room, certain machines need to be positioned in certain areas. The machines in the centre of the room are more generic but the serious punters, who play the highly volatile machines (that require a bit more money to win) want to be in a more private area, so we put those machines where people can walk past but can’t spectate. Then obviously there are the ‘101 basics’ like the access to the room, full smoking, bar service, and the proximity of the toilets. That’s all ‘a given’, but the major concern is getting these surroundings to match the visual experience of the machines so people feel the excitement just by being there. Players want to experience the thrill of luck in an environment that goes beyond what they imagine: that’s the key. There are two main sections at the Gregory Hills Hotel: the main gaming floor and the garden areas. The garden areas are super advanced: there are lush tropical settings, water features with handcrafted brass domes, sandstone wall cladding with brass recesses, lots of lighting and pot plants with water featured throughout, along with pebbles, tiles and marble. Inside there’s a generously high ceiling with a decorative hanging system based on an LED wrap which extends up to six metres — that’s the centrepiece of the room. There are carved decorative screens, aluminium and timber wall cladding and gold polished stainless steel and mirrored sections — wherever you look there’s a little glisten of light from a machine being picked up here or there. It’s exciting.
FULL COMPLIANCE: PERFECT COMFORT It is a fully compliant gaming room — patrons are free to smoke. Even though it’s completely covered overhead there are open sections of light above and it’s naturally ventilated. The climate control is excessive — we want to provide ultimate comfort for players whether it’s a 40° day or a 3° night.
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They want to experience the thrill of luck in an environment that goes beyond what they imagine: that’s the key There’s also a scented misting addition to the air conditioning system that pumps a certain dosage into the air. It’s a feature common to casinos and upmarket hotels — Crown has a certain smell to it, as does a W Hotel, for example. For the Gregory Hills Hotel, it’s a variation on the Crown scent, like a very light aftershave with hints of leather and tobacco. It’s the smell of opulence. Wherever we can, we use indirect lighting and there’s beautiful soft glow that wraps around the whole room. It’s a very warm light — the colour temperature is 2700K, which is the temperature we see as being ‘just right’ in these rooms. The lighting changes as the day goes on in a 24-hour program, and a lot of the lighting comes from the machines as well as the natural light.
WINNING STREAK The Gregory Hills Hotel was a $1m+ contract. It’s a lot to spend on a ‘humble pokies room’, but gaming accounts for a considerable chunk of the venue’s income. So the cost of these rooms is high but the fitout is of the highest level. And it’s working: most Paul Kelly Design rooms’ revenues increase by 30 or 40 percent after a renovation, which is significant considering what these rooms can potentially turn over. In just four weeks at Gregory Hills Hotel the gaming surpassed the six-month target. For a startup pub it’s an amazing legup. The gaming market has been very good to Paul Kelly Design. We’re one of only a few to design rooms to this level and have the results to back it up. We’ve done some 80 to 100 gaming rooms, so we have a number of tricks and techniques that ensure our rooms become more successful than anybody else’s. And, we can track our success: every quarter we know where the turnover has gone in the hotels we’ve worked on. We have all the metrics and that’s the reason we get these rooms. CONTACT:
Paul Kelly Design: (02) 9660 8299 or www.paulkellydesign.com.au
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Game On: The Gregory Hills Hotel’s gaming area exemplifies Paul Kelly’s design philosophies. The hotel was built by New England Constructions and the pub itself was designed by Bergstrom Architects. Paul Kelly Designs was engaged as a gaming room specialist in this case, because, as GM John Payne put it “there’s no one better”.
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uestions with
Michael McCann
Michael is the founder of Dreamtime Australia Design and offers a unique skill set as an ‘insider’ with 28 years in hospitality operations. Interview: Jen Temm
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was about to get married and my future wife didn’t like the idea of living in 12 more countries. We were living in Mexico and decided to start Dreamtime there in 1995, initially as a small luxury resort development, design and operational company. But without capital backing that was very difficult to achieve. After returning to Australia in 1997 we initially consulted to restaurant clients and also operated a few before finally repositioning Dreamtime as a complete service design company, offering a range of services such as site selection, negotiation, architecture, interior design, commercial kitchen and bar design, lighting design, graphic design and even preparing financial projections and key staff recruitment. I knew if I wanted to design top-level hospitality projects I could not get there by designing takeaways in shopping malls. But how do you approach the nation’s top restaurateurs with nothing to show? I had to find clients who didn’t think they needed the country’s top designer, or even the best restaurant design — then give it to them anyway. Initially, we designed two small-budget restaurants (Zenith on Booth and Dish in Byron Bay). Both achieved a one hat ranking and we got some press. Then Flying Fish restaurant in Sydney’s Jones Bay Wharf won the national restaurant design award in 2004 and really raised our visibility. How did we keep going through the GFC? Ha — I fired everybody! In all seriousness it was a very difficult and depressing time. We had approximately 80 percent of our projects cancelled within a four-month period at the end of 2008. I was forced to reduce our office staff from 12 down to two just to keep the business going, and I lost a lot of fantastic people. I’m not exaggerating when I say we had to ration food and petrol at home for a year or two just to stay open and keep the kids in school. I would encourage young designers to be more creative and not just repeat the easiest designs possible with no fear of failure. Design colleges need to change their curriculums to teach students how to build their designs and become experts in materials, and get actual work experience with builders in the field. Build-ability is everything — right down to the millimetre. I would guess that 80 to 90 percent of all res-
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taurant and bar designs in Australia at the moment involve almost the exact same recycled bricks, rustic timber flooring, industrial lights and variations on the same furniture, fixtures and equipment. The entire country is starting to look like it has been designed by one firm. The top designers worldwide are the ones which understood how to conjure up a complete concept — not just pick out a number of finishes and fixtures which really have no relation to one another — but a real concept. These are the environments that patrons never want to leave, and dramatically change the financial fortunes of the venues. This is what I try to achieve. Luckily we’ve never been sued nor had fees deducted for screwing something up. I’m super careful in our design documentation — not a single page of design has ever left our office without me signing it off, which slows things down a bit after the tenth revision but is the only way to protect your business. Australian design is a world leader in terms of quality and innovation, be it in architecture or interior design, and I am proud of calling myself an Australian designer even though I’m originally from the US. This is one of the reasons I chose to use the word ‘Australia’ in our company name as well as the Aboriginal graphic. The smallest job I’ve ever done would probably be Pony restaurant in The Rocks area of Sydney, which was only 104sqm inside, with a 60sqm deck. It’s still one of my favourites and started laneway dining in Sydney as well as the trend of cooking on firewood. Our largest design was the master planning of a new national park with resorts, a golf course, natural mountain attractions and so on for the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, through Aldar Development Corp. It was fascinating: they had to fly our 3D models via helicopter to his weekend palace at the top of a mountain in Al Ain for approval. If I had to pick one or two great designs that really impacted me I would have to say the original Hakkasan restaurant in London designed by Christian Liagre, and Mezzanine restaurant in Singapore designed by Super Potato from Japan. The depth and beauty of the concepts, materiality, lighting, FF&E, you name it — tremendous ‘wow’ and that important but elusive sense of mystery that makes you want to explore every corner.
I would encourage young designers to be more creative ... The entire country is starting to look like it has been designed by one firm
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Mirror Image
Greek Treat
Designed and manufactured in the United States, Electric Mirror products are used in hotel, hospitality, commercial and residential projects across the globe. High-end hotel clients are using Electric Mirror products to conceal TV screens to great affect. Electric Mirror is happy to take on any bespoke mirror manufacturing challenge.
The Hellenic, a popular beachside souvlaki bar in Melbourne, recently expanded into the new rooftop dining precinct at Westfield, South Sydney. De Simone Designs was engaged to design a new restaurant which would merge a modern Greek island scheme (think: traditional tiles, rendering and natural stone) with an Aussie ‘beach hut’ pavilion. The outcome is a unique and eclectic design blend that harmoniously inhabits an unorthodox site. Outdoor furniture came from Coco Republic.
Electric Mirror: www.electricmirror.com
de Simone Design: www.desimonedesign.com.au
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Poacher Turns Gamekeeper
Natale’s Big Reception
Poacher & Hound in Mount Waverley is the work of Techne Architecture + Interior Design studio. Bringing together natural materials, brass and graphic elements, the design explores the ‘poacher and a hound’ story. “The space is imagined as the found sanctuary of a harsh terrain traveller, creating refined resources which are of the land,” says Techne student architect Brad Mitchell… evidently working on his PhD! Local makers abound in the cafe fitout, with hand-crafted tables by Jardan and Melbourne Iron & Steel, and stools by Mark Tuckey and Dowel Jones.
Designer Greg Natale, has masterminded a multimillion dollar refurbishment of the historic The Sebel Kirkton Park Hunter Valley. Upon arrival, guests are welcomed into an intimate arrivals precinct, complete with Natale’s Hudson lounge chairs and tables, and Ralph Lauren lamps. The reception and atrium are coated in Natale’s Atlantic Blue wallpaper from Porter’s Paints. Sumptuous.
Technem Architecture + Interior Design: (03) 9600 0222 or techne.com.au
Greg Natale: (02) 8399 2103 or www.gregnatale.com
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Casio’s new LampFree models include four WXGA and three XGA models. All seven of the new models are equipped with a 1.5x zoom lens. The Advanced Series can also be used to power other devices with HDMI terminal connections such as Intel WiDi or Miracast wireless display adapters and stick devices, making it the ideal BYOD projector for meeting rooms and function spaces.
New Hyderabad hotspot, Block 22, has invested in a serious L-Acoustics sound system. The new 500-capacity nightclub features a main space, two VIP areas and an elevated DJ booth. The system features main clusters of three ARCS WiFo, one Wide and two Focus, either side, and two SB18 subs per side, four SB28 subs for the dance floor and four of L-Acoustics’ new X12 cabinets. The system is powered by LA4X and LA8 amplifier controllers.
Shriro Australia: casioprojector.shriro.com.au
L-Acoustics: www.l-acoustics.com Australian Distributor: www.hills.com.au
WiFi Hearing Assist
Philips’ Android Smarts
Listen Technologies’ family of ListenWiFi products distribute high quality audio over a wireless network to smart devices. You can now have more than 1000 access points (allows venues to expand the number of users from 60 to over 1000), twice the channels (now supporting up to 24 stereo channels), and international support (select a language of choice for navigating menus). Ideal for function and events spaces, and (as pictured) gyms.
Powered by Android TV, Philips SmartTV give hotel guests a wealth of apps to use during their stay (Google services, on demand movies, games etc). Philips SmartTV allows you to configure apps online per hotel or per room — apps that are specifically tailored for hospitality use. SmartTV keeps control over the bandwidth and its costs, and it’s cloud based: no need to upgrade a TV in a room again and new apps are immediately visible. Furthermore, all log-in data is deleted immediately after use.
NAS: 1800 441 440 or sales@nationalaudio.com.au Westan: 1300 963 963 or www.westan.com.au
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French Authenticity
Float Your Boat
Laurent is a chain of 15 bakery stores evoking the boulevards of Paris. The brand consulted Design Clarity to design their store in the redeveloped Eastland Shopping Centre. Senior Designer Sandrine Nehme has a French background and looked to the interiors of typical French brasseries for design ideas, arriving at the dark finishes, wrought iron and brass details, feature tiling and booth seating. Mirrors etched with metallic calligraphy cover the back wall, catching the glow from the hanging light pendants from Auhaus Architecture.
Float from Mark Douglass Design is designed and handblown with love in Melbourne. If blown in colour, its impact lies in the pronounced colour transition from top to bottom, adding some modern complexity. This understated little beauty is available in two shapes — either round or tear drop and 11 colours available. Finishing options: transparent or frosted. Pricing starts from $1080. Mark Douglass Design: www.markdouglassdesign.com
Design Clarity: (02) 9319 0933 or designclarity.net Auhaus Architecture: auhaus-arch.com
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Martin Rush MH8
Hey Ladies
The Rush MH8 Mini Profile is Martin Professional’s smallest moving head with super sharp optics and over 800 lumens output via a tight 14° beam angle. Eight gobos and eight vibrant colours are available, with electronic strobe/dimming, manual focus and high-speed pan and tilt. The eye-catching effects can be controlled via DMX or synchronised to a music beat via audio trig. Perfect for anything from the lounge bar to the high-energy dance floor, and all within an affordable price bracket.
Three Queens is a quirky one-off café space constructed within a short time frame and designed by Arthur Koutoulas. The client brief was to design a cost effective cafe interior with minimal impact to the existing architecture. The solution was to keep everything modular and freestanding. The pendant lights are a good example of the custom designed approach. They’re made from perforated sheet metal, folded and fabricated into the shape. The stool appears to be fabricated from solid pipe but is, in fact, moulded polyethylene plastic. Funky. (Photo: Paul Gosney)
Show Technology: (02) 9748 1122 or showtech.com.au
Arthur Koutoulas: www.arthurkoutoulas.com
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ARGYLE: ROLL THE TAPE Contact The Argyle: theargylerocks.com Show Technology: (02) 9748 1122 or showtech.com.au
LX INSTALL Martin dot2 console 13 x Martin Rush MH2 4 x Martin Rush MH4 4 x GLP Impression X1 9 x Hex 36 exterior lights 5 x Impression X1 LED Tape RGB LED RoxStrip LED Hex16 Strip 2 x Martin Rush Strobe CWL
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he Argyle in Sydney’s Rocks district remains an inner city bastion of sophisticated partying. It continues to thrive where others have failed. Part of its success lies in its willingness to reinvest in the venue. This year The Argyle treated itself to a complete lighting upgrade — inside and out. The design came from Show Technology, while lighting install specialists, Slave, provided the on-the-ground expertise, and the result is a fullyintegrated lighting system that provides warmth and mood, and all the firepower an LD needs when the club is full swing. “The Argyle approached Show Technology to assist with updating its interior and exterior lighting,” commented Show Technology’s Business Development Manager, Stephen Dallimore. “We developed a design that would work with the unique heritage architecture as well as provide maximum impact without breaking the bank.” Some of the big-ticket items include a new MA Lighting dot2 lighting console and a complement of Martin Rush moving head lights. But the unsung hero of the upgrade is the LED Tape from Show Technology. Originally the brief was to light the glorious sandstone and timbers of The Argyle, and LED tape was the only means of achieving the desired result in a cost effective manner. Phil Hudson The Argyle’s Entertainment Manager gave venue a quick comparison of the more traditional LED RoxStrip fixture behind the bar areas which was around ‘$950 a metre’ as compared to the far thriftier LED tape. Yes, the LED bar has more throw, but the tape isn’t far behind.
UNROLL THE TAPE
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The LED tape skirts much of the venue’s perimeter, lighting and theming the walls and timber. It’s been meticulously installed by Slave — recessed and then neatly covered with a diffusion strip. When not in club mode, the colour of the tape is easily adjusted using a pushbutton wallplate controller behind the bar. It couldn’t be easier.
In club mode the MA dot2 lighting controller takes over, allowing the house lighting tech to seamlessly incorporate the LED tape into the show. It might sound like a small thing, but this type of integration is not as common as you might expect around the traps: “In other venues we’ll often see that an electrician has put something in or someone else has walked into the venue with a cheap alternative,” commented Slave’s Head Tech, Shan Soley. “At The Argyle, it’s all integrated, with one DMX stream — it’s a beautiful thing and rarely done. It’s great to walk in as a lighting designer and dim all the lighting down — including the LED tape — or control the walls independently. You’d be surprised how many people put up with multiple JB Hifi-style individual infrared remote controllers.”
WORKING WITH LED TAPE Working with Show Technology’s LED Tape is easy but needs planning to get the best results. The tape is manufactured on a single, flexible circuit board. The brightness comes from the densely populated, high-quality Cree LED components. The tape ships in 3m or 5m rolls. The tape uses a top-quality 3M adhesive backing — clean the surface, peel the backing and place it on. To shorten a length to size, it’s as easy as carefully cutting the tape. Lengthening and joining tape is trickier. The manufacturer will supply a clip to make the join, but Slave (being perfectionists!) have gone to the trouble of doing some fine soldering work to ensure the joins are seamless and longer lasting. “The 3M adhesive is as good as you can buy,” commented Shan. “Saying that, with a job like this where everything structural has a heritage overlay, the great thing about the tape is it’s not permanent, which meets the guidelines.” The latest generation Show Technology LED Tape is high in brightness but also easy on the power. A 3m roll is only rated at 5A, allowing one transformer to power multiple rolls of tape. The reason for the low current is in the efficiency of the high quality LEDs — the power is efficiently turned in to visible light and not heat unlike cheaper alternatives.
To get the best you need to work with the best...
The Best Sound Reinforcement, Lighting and Stage Management Pictured: The Art House, Wyong – a new 500 seat regional theatre Other key theatre technology venues with fit-for-purpose solutions include: Blue Mountains Theatre, Eternity Playhouse, The Glasshouse, Joy Yeo Performing Arts Centre, Sydney Town Hall, Sydney Conservatorium, Sydney Opera House, Dubbo Regional Theatre – and many more.
Experience | Independence | Assurance P. (02) 8755 8700 / E. sales@papeople.com.au / 9-11 Leeds St, Rhodes NSW 2138
papeople.com.au
KEEPING IT REAL The Northcote Social Club: 301 High Street, Northcote VIC (03) 9489 3917 or northcotesocialclub.com
Abundant greenery livens up the outdoor deck — which now features a full-service bar — while sleek but understated furniture give the indoor bar dining area a refreshed look.
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orthcote Social Club publican, Andrew Mansfield, knows his patrons. What’s more he likes them. He understands the affection for which his venue is held by the community. Words like ‘unpretentious’ and ‘authentic’ come up quite a bit in his conversation with venue. So after some 10 years of being a local live venue and pub, he and his partners knew a refurb was inevitable, but he didn’t want to screw it up. “People have an ownership of these spaces — we’re mindful of that. So I wanted the refurb to be conscious of that connection with our regulars and our history. I didn’t want to get fancy or ‘south of the river’ with polished concrete and stainless steel everywhere. So we maintained links with the past (repurposing some brick and even carpet) and using plenty of timber.”
EGO IS A DIRTY WORD
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Breathe Architecture was engaged to fulfil the ‘same but better’ brief. It was a good choice. Breathe knows the area and isn’t motivated by flashy-statement ego. Director Jeremy McCleod likes to tell the Italian Waiters Club story as a way of
Contact Breathe Architecture: (03) 9381 2007 or www.breathe.com.au
explaining the motivations: “Six Degrees [architects] did the Italian Waiters’ Club in Melbourne a while back after a fire destroyed much of the restaurant. And, so the anecdote goes, they pulled up a sample of the old crappy carpet tile and colour matched it. Sure the kitchen was brand new and a revelation to staff, but from a front of house perspective, it was almost like nothing had changed: the same crappy wood panelling, brown carpet tiles… We were inspired by Six Degrees’ lack of ego.” In the same way, regulars have felt right at home in the new Northcote Social Club, but that’s not to say that plenty hasn’t changed. It has.
BANDROOM CONNECTIONS The bandroom is right at the heart of the venue, both on the plan and in the planning. The beer garden sits behind and the front bar between it and High Street. Trouble was, the lack of connection between each component. “In our research,” observed Jeremy McCleod. “It wasn’t uncommon for people to line up outside the building in the rain, get into the bandroom, stay there for the gig, have a great night… but
once the band finished and the doors open back out, people just filed out. We learnt that some people who had been attending gigs at the venue for years didn’t even realise there was a beer garden. “So a lot of what we’ve done is blur the edges; make it easy to connect between the bandroom, the courtyard and the front bar. “It’s better for patrons, the bands (with better green room facilities) and it’s better for the staff. It’s a better more engaging, experience.”
QUIRKY
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The Northcote Social Club is ready for the next 10 years, maintaining its position as a live music lynchpin. I love the fact the renovation has intentionally retained many of the venue’s quirky imperfections. Even as the area becomes more gentrified I’ve no doubt Northcote Social Club regulars can relate and respond: perfectly imperfect… sums us up really.
SUCCESSFUL LIVE VENUE CHECKLIST
Andrew Mansfield: “For a live venue of our level and above, the most important thing is a demonstrative level of commitment. When you’re dealing with touring artists, managers and bookers, they want to see that you’re ‘all in’ as a live venue — fully committed. “The fact we have around 40 percent of our floor space occupied by the bandroom shows a level of commitment. And for us, that’s a space that’s dedicated to live music, you can’t repurpose or make it feel like anything other than a bandroom. “People also want to see a commitment to complementing that space with the best equipment you can afford. Musicians and front of house techs are keen to read your spec list and it’s satisfying to meet or exceed expectations. And the gear has to be well maintained. We want touring engineers to feel confident that the gear will work and if there are issues they’ll be fixed. “We have a good longstanding relationship with our booking agents. You need that understanding, so you can work together with the artists for a successful show. “Don’t expect blind loyalty to your venue. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a ‘house crowd’ that comes in and you have to pander to them stylistically. If you have something people want to see they’ll travel to get there.”
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BORDERLINE CRAZY The El Camino road is paved with giant margaritas, wagyu fajitas and classic rock ‘n’ roll. Story: Jen Temm Photos: Rohan Venn El Camino Cantina: 18 Argyle Street, The Rocks NSW (02) 9259 5668 or www.elcaminocantina.com.au
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l Camino Cantina serves up classic TexMex on a grand scale: gutsy flavours of drinks, music and food, all wrapped in a vibrant neon-flooded space adorned with cacti, skulls, car parts and flames like the bizarre love child of Vivid and a spaghetti western. “It was more like a set design than a restaurant design; we built the fantasy,” says Urban Purveyor Group’s go-to interior designer Melissa Collison, who worked closely with hands-on UPG CEO Thomas Pash on the project. The new venue is the group’s latest foray into casual dining and is nestled in Sydney’s historic Rocks precinct alongside the group’s other local venues — Munich Brauhaus, The Cut Bar & Grill, Saké Restaurant and The Argyle. The vibe is loud, fun and over-the-top: the large and airy space seats around 340 and boasts two huge bars, free chips and salsas served out of restored 1957 Chevy boots, and a tortilla station delivering thousands of fresh corn and flour tortillas daily. A drinks lounge offers a crazy 200-strong tequila and mescal list from around $9 to $190 per pour, along with cocktails and a selection of Mexican and craft beers. Open seven days with 3am trading on Fridays and Saturdays, the venue emphasises entertainment as much as it does food and drinks, with a regular mariachi band, DJs and ‘legends of rock’ theme nights.
DRAWING FIRE The décor throughout the zones of the venue are an imaginative interpretation of the El Camino route, the historic 1000km stretch from Mexico into the US.
An oversized Day of the Dead illuminated bulb skull with red lightning bolts greets diners on entry, and the bare brick and whitewashed walls and high ceilings of the heritage space are covered with custom-made neon signage, multi-coloured lightbulbs, bold murals and mirrors. The main dining area has booth seating with vintage car upholstery and Mexican-style hand-painted timber chairs, and handcrafted mosaic tiles cover tabletops and walls. Car headlights are used to illuminate the room and are hung with thick rusted metal chain. Old Chevy bonnets create the DJ booth, which is flanked by vintage electric guitars and found Mexican licence plates. “We wanted it to look like some dude in Texas had just recreated this venue and fitted it out with stuff he found in his garage,” Collison explains. “We literally used found fence palings and hurricane fencing and corrugated iron and old bonnets and hub caps. “Even some of our signage is imperfect and that’s very intentional: the illuminated taco sign is like someone got some old metal out, banged it with a hammer on Saturday afternoon and hung it up that night for when his friends came over for a tequila slammer.” There’s no shortage of subtle detail either: the flames across the main bar are the right flames for low-riders and were created by a car spray paint artist Collison spent two days tracking down; above it hang barbed wire-trussed railway sleepers populated by a murder of fake crows to evoke the desert journey. The huge entry archway echoes the adobe-style arches of Mexican villages, complete with handmade crosses, and brass mis-
sion bells hang across the kitchen. On the surface the gaudy, theatrical interior may seem incongruous in the heritage Rocks precinct but Collison says the building offered the perfect canvas for the design. Each element was designed with minimal impact and fixings to building, and the team designed around the existing kitchen, back of house, bars and bathrooms. “I think it actually worked in our favour,” she says. “As an older-style building it meant we had a lot of beautiful qualities we could play on, such as the brick walls, the sandstone, the timber frames, the exposed ceilings, the timber floorboards, the limed walls — all of these things meant we could actually play up on it being an old building somewhere in Texas that someone’s just kitted out.”
HOT SOURCE While shopfitter UTJ Interiors and lighting designer Electrolight sourced many of the fittings locally, US-born CEO Thomas Pash brought in several containers from home including the furniture, the Mexican tiles, the Chevy trunks and a lot of the lighting and signage. “You can’t find that stuff here but it’s pretty easy to get there, and actually it was very costeffective as well,” Pash says. “We had just come out of doing a $3.5m Saké fitout on Flinders Lane with the absolute best finishes on everything — each chair costs $1200 and each table costs $2000 — and then we go into this venue and the chairs are $10 and the tables are $15! We had a lot of fun with this down ’n’ dirty Tex-Mex concept.” Pash opened and ran several similar venues in
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Austin, Texas where he says you’ll find a Tex-Mex on every corner — indeed, his first hospitality job at 14 was in a cantina working as server, cook and janitor. “I don’t believe anyone in this market is delivering a real Tex-Mex experience, not the way it is done in cities like Austin,” he says. “We wanted a concept that was very big on entertainment value but very bar-driven. When you look at Tex-Mex and doing it right, it’s maybe 50 or 60 percent alcohol and that works very well here in the Rocks precinct. More than half the people that come in get either a big or a massive margarita.”
BRANDING IRONED El Camino Cantina replaces UPG’s upmarket French brasserie Ananas which, with its distinctive pineapples, shifts across to the new International Convention Centre in Darling Harbour and opens in October. And so far Sydney has embraced the new concept: every night has been full in the weeks since its opening in June with average bookings of eight right up until 12.30am — hospitality staff from neighbouring venues taking advantage of the late night hours for post-shift drinks and even some double dipping, with customers popping in from the Argyle for a late night cocktails and the premium-cut wagyu fajitas. The venue is the 26th for UPG, which recently acquired the Fratelli Fresh group, and plans are well underway to double its food portfolio over the next two years. Another nine El Camino Cantinas are planned nationwide, with expansions to the group’s other brands that capitalise on the growth in the casual dining sector: Saké Junior, geared to faster lunch crowds, launches in Melbourne’s Bourke Street with another to follow in Sydney’s CBD, along with new Fratelli Fresh pizzerias. CONTACTS Urban Purveyor Group: (02) 9259 5600 or www.urbanpurveyor.com Melissa Collison Interior Design (Interior Design): (02) 9328 3300 or melissacollison.com.au Electrolight (Lighting Design): (02) 9267 4777 or electrolight.com Sound On Stage (Audio & AV): (02) 9281 0077 or www.soundonstage.com.au UTJ Interiors (Joinery): (02) 4271 5522 or utjinteriors.com.au Triple X Stainless (Kitchen): (02) 4721 7300 or www.triplexstainless.com The Drawing Arm (Artwork): (02) 9939 5901 or thedrawingarm.com.au Spike Design (Signage): (02) 9519 5607 or spikedesign.com.au
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STATE OF THE ART HOUSE The Art House: Margaret St, Wyong NSW www.thearthousewyong.com.au
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Contact The Art House: www.thearthousewyong.com.au The P.A. People: (02) 8755 8700 or installedsystems@papeople.com.au Shuler Shook: 0438 382 408 or www.schulershook.com Jands (JBL, Crown, Shure, ETC): (02) 9582 0909 or info@jands.com.au Yamaha: www.yamahaproaudio.com or commercial-audio-aus@music.yamaha.com
he Art House Wyong is a new performing arts venue in the heart of the NSW Central Coast. Having recently opened in May 2016, the centre boasts a 500seat proscenium arch Theatre and a flexible 130-seat ‘Studio’ space, suitable for emerging artists or digitally linked to the Theatre as an orchestra room. Amazingly, this beautiful venue was 100% council funded, and brought in at a relatively modest construction cost of $12.7m. The investment is already reaping dividends for the area hosting local theatre companies and events along with attracting high-quality touring acts. Julie Vaughan, Project Manager, The Art House Wyong reflects on the process: “We worked with The P.A. People’s Brett Steele and Chris Dodds on the project. They walked the council through the process and, as a result, the council got amazing value for a regional theatre, and the community is now enjoying a very professional space, “she continued. “We didn’t have to sacrifice on the technical aspects, and we installed industry standard equipment. The lighting and sound equipment we use every day isn’t where the cost savings were made. The equipment that makes the venue run is where the quality is, so the shows don’t suffer.”
Further processing for the back of house system is courtesy of a BSS BLU-100, also connected to the Dante network. Yamaha digital mixing desks reside on a Dante backbone, with a QL5 for large shows in the theatre, and a smaller TF1 digital console for the Studio.
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Theatre consultant Schuler Shook, with Simon Austin taking the lead, prepared the spec, while The P.A. People installed the heart of The Art House’s technical systems. The Theatre’s PA is a JBL VRX 900 Series system, with four elements each of VRX932LA-1 at left, centre and right. Two VRX918S subwoofers are flown above centre. Front fill is provided by seven JBL AC18/26s. The rig is powered and processed by a combination of Crown DCi4 and DCi8 amplifiers.
“It’s great to see local councils building theatres,” said architect Tim Greer of Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects. “They’re very difficult buildings to deliver, with their multiple stakeholders. Wyong, with its limited resources, now has a great asset. It’s terrific they’ve delivered this. There’s a strong culture of theatre and performance groups within the local government area of Wyong who have agitated for this venue for a very long time, and it’s good they’ve got such a great facility.”
STAGE & LIGHTS: RIGHT TRACK The stage management console is a custom P.A. People build, and houses a Jands Ezicom 401 master station, a Leon Audio QLM16 MK4 cue light master station, Shure mic and a dual eight-inch LCD video monitors. Comms headsets are from Beyerdynamic, and back-of-house area paging is through a combination of JBL and TOA ceiling and surfacemount loudspeakers. Theatre lighting control is from an industry standard ETC Gio, while the Studio is run from a smaller ETC Element 40. The system is built around 20 Jands HPC12 digital dimmers, which control a predominantly LED rig built around ETC Source 4 LED models and Selecon Rama LED Fresnels, flown from Jands JLX-Pro lighting bars. Cyclorama wash is provided from seven Chroma-Q Color Force CF72 LED battens.
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Award winner InAVation 2015 | Best of Show InfoComm 2015
NEW SET The Oxford Hotel: 124 Oxford St, Sydney Story: Lucie Robson
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rom its spot on the corner looking over Taylor Square, The Oxford Hotel sees all the action in this colourful part of Sydney. Now the strip is changing and no matter how you feel about the Sydney lockouts, which restrict opening and service times in the inner-city, it’s clear that they present a challenge to venues that once relied on late-night traffic and committed drinkers. The Oxford Hotel’s ground-level Oxford Bar now has a new look, and it’s now more of a café or small bar than a rowdy party pub. Principal of Swerve Design Stefan Elliott says that adapting to the new environment provides a chance for thoughtful design to turn lemons into lemonade. “We all felt that a bright, happy, ‘Stuff ‘em all’-style shot in the arm was needed to bring life back to this landmark hotel,” Elliott explains. “The Oxford Bar is now all about food and wine, not the old bulk beer and late night shots. Quality over quantity; café/bar, rather than beer barn.”
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FRESH PRESSING This is expressed with a wine wall straddling the smoking terrace and entry foyer and a coffee machine in the bar, as
well as new seating to welcome more diners. To move the feel of the interior away from pub and towards small bar, the team removed existing plasma screens. “A food-friendly focus drove the finishes selections, joinery and furniture,” Elliott says. “All tables were sized up to accommodate plates and sides, booths were designed in the style of an American diner, chairs were chosen for comfort and a café vibe.” Wine sales are up, Elliott explains, and the kitchen is busy. Bright colours and warm lighting entice passers-by from the street. The interior is a pleasing jumble of contrasting shades, patterns and textures, with an eye-catching macrame creation on the far wall and quirky painted light fittings adorned with fanning ‘legs’. It’s a bit like visiting the new apartment of a well-travelled friend. “Our retro-influenced décor — like the roller-pattern wallpaper — is a blast from the past for our (Gen X and older) customers who grew up with these sorts of patterns,” Elliott explains. “It’s familiar and welcoming, like Gran’s cooking. But we’ve souped it up all new with contemporary production techniques. It’s all digitally printed. And the macrame wall, clearly a ’70s throwback, was hand-dyed by local artist, Melissa Carey in daring fluoro orange.”
CONTACTS Swerve Design: 0414 740 162 or www.swervedesign.com.au Brazier Interiors (joiner): 0408 231 200 1 BSeated Global (stools): www.bseatedglobal.com.au 2 Identity Furniture (high tables): www.identityfurniture.com.au Synergie Projects (builder): www.synergieprojects.com.au Brintons (carpet): www.brintons.net
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HOLIDAY POSTCARD Elliott describes the look as one that evokes a classic holiday postcard or a sitcom TV set. “We want people to be drawn in from the street by all the colour and life and feel comfortable to be themselves, whoever they may be,” he says. The smokers’ terrace facing Oxford St is particularly unique, its glass walls covered with a bright green scene from European mountains somewhere. “You feel like you’ve stepped out onto the mountain for a quick gasper,” he says. “It’s actually a pay-out of the Salem/Alpine cigarette commercials of the 80’s, where the smokers themselves are in the ad. And it makes a fab stained glass window effect from the inside. Security can see who’s there, but the smokers are not part of the main room anymore, but an animated artwork beyond.” The popular event spaces have been kept as they were. Directly above Oxford Bar is cabaret room Gingers, and premium function space Polo Lounge is above that. In the basement is nightclub room Underground. Swerve’s job was to draw more visitors to the party rooms through a new and attractive ground floor. Elliott says that Swerve were given free rein to design something entirely new, to please valued guests in a unique,
and beloved location. “Our client needs to be congratulated for taking the leap of faith to transform this much loved landmark hotel with a wholly new offer and unique approach,” he says. “No cookie-cutter “let’s make it look like this or that bar” direction was ever given. It was a blank slate given to us to do whatever we felt was going to fly.”
LOCKOUT SPIN As debate around the lockouts intensifies, other venues looking for a positive spin — or just a way to survive — may be wise to follow The Oxford Hotel’s lead. Swerve engaged the brand strategy services of David Tarr from TrueBrand, who Elliott says built a narrative around the tagline “Progressively Cosmopolitan”, and focused on the venue’s place as a welcoming third space between work and home. “And all done with as much tongue and cheek as we could get away with,” Elliott says.
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SIR Hotels Berlin, Hamburg & Amsterdam
SIR Hotels has opened three new properties — Sir Savigny in Berlin, followed by Sir Adam, their second outpost in Amsterdam, and finally Sir Nikolai in Hamburg — and from the looks of these images, they’re 100% hipster-ready. SIR is a relative upstart in the hotel scene. Based in Amsterdam since 2011, the group’s properties are deeply embedded in their urban locations. There’s no lack of personality. The Berlin-based Sir Savigny property features 44 guest rooms, outfitted by Amsterdam-based designer Saar Zafrir. The fluid design of the ground-floor reception rooms (top left) has been created by interior designers Baranowitz + Kronenberg, allowing guests to slip seamlessly between perusing Sir Savigny’s book collection in The Library to sipping aperitifs fireside in the Winter Garden.
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The design of Sir Adam, Amsterdam (above left), is the work of New York-based agency Icrave. The host’s love of music permeates every aspect of the hotel, from the Crosley phono players and illuminated song lyrics in the 108 guest rooms, to the comprehensive Music Library. Urbane, charming, and effortlessly elegant, Sir Nikolai (above) is positioned on the Nikolaifleet canal in Hamburg’s old town. Design agency FG Stijl has directed its nous to artfully combining the stately merchant townhouse and adjoining goods store to create Sir Nikolai’s 94-room debonair digs. Thanks to a strategic partnership with restauranteur extraordinaire Yossi Eliyahoo’s The Entourage Group, the hotels’ culinary offerings certainly won’t be the weak link. SIR Hotels: www.sirhotels.com
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