Holy Grail Civic bites the dust?

Hells_Bells74 said :

I don’t think location is enough of an excuse, if it is good and remains good, the people will come (think of Brodburgers I suppose).

That’s quite right, particularly as the original article said, these places are well known. They shouldn’t need to rely on passing traffic.
Reviews don’t seem great though: http://www.eatability.com.au/au/canberra/holy-grail-restaurant-bar-kingston/
On a side note, while both are owned by Ian Meldrum, I believe the Civic business was his wife’s to run day to day. Ironically, I always considered the classier one.
The Kingston one reminded me a bit of the dingy bar shown in Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” video clip.

Keijidosha said :

At a cursory glance the biggest problem with Holy Grail in the city is its location. You can’t make a venue that big viable without foot traffic, and in that respect it is in no-mans land. I’ve often wondered how it turned a profit, and now I know that it didn’t!

Whilst it is far out, in it’s early days, when I used to go a fair bit it wasn’t unusual to be walking with dozens of people at a time, there and back.. that itself was kind of a fun part of the evening. Making friends along the way. Sitting out front there was always a constant stream coming and going. I don’t think location is enough of an excuse, if it is good and remains good, the people will come (think of Brodburgers I suppose).

Les Lozenger said :

Additionally, aren’t there new apartments being built close by near Glebe Park? Sadly I’m supposing that if nothing else, that would have been the death of it anyway.

Diagonally across the intersection, the building there is in the process of demolition.

Kerryhemsley said :

Rivers, KFC, Mcdonalds?

Geez I can hardly wait for one of those outlets to take over.

In case you weren’t aware, KFC and Maccas used to occupy the areas now occupied by Holy Grail and adjacent stores.

AG Canberra said :

the owner of these establishments is an OK bloke

IMO, not so much.

Rivers, KFC, Mcdonalds?

Geez I can hardly wait for one of those outlets to take over.

Agreed the acoustics killed it.

That little pocket of the city causes a pretty large dead space. Glebe Park is like retail kryptonite. Town planning at its worst.

Bring back Maccas and KFC.

I think it would have been just what the city needed in terms of an inner city live venue with a slightly bigger audience capacity than that of the other venues currently in town.

I agree about it being out of the way from foot traffic but I’d also heard quite a few times that most bigger bands who’d attract audiences of the 200-300 capacity unfortunately didn’t want to play there because of its awful acoustics. I’ve seen touring bands on big and small nights there and have played the room a few times too. It was an echo chamber when audience numbers weren’t great, and it was still quite bad even when reasonably full of people.

It’s such a pity because it was such a cool looking room for a venue too. I’m no room acoustics specialist but i’m guessing the layout probably had something to do with it. That and possibly the lack of fabric in the room.

Ian was a good bloke to deal with too based on my phone discussions with him.

Additionally, aren’t there new apartments being built close by near Glebe Park? Sadly I’m supposing that if nothing else, that would have been the death of it anyway.