Civic's Reload Bar & Games to go out with a bang after 10-plus years

A stalwart of Civic is leaving – a decade after it was founded and a year after it was listed for sale.

Canberra’s pop culture and video game-themed venue, Reload Bar and Games, located in the Sydney Building (perhaps most famous for the Tardis that lived outside on the footpath for years), is officially leaving us forever on Saturday, 22 March.

But it’s not going quietly.

A whole month of special events are planned to see it out, from K-Pop and Taylor Swift-themed nights to a Mario Kart tournament and Slam Pro wrestling match.

Reload was founded in 2014 by three guys – Ravi Sharma, Jim Andrews and Marc Brown.

Ravi owns that particular slab of the Sydney Building, and at the time, Jim was looking for an alternative venue for his internet café.

“I was trying to get him to move it into my upstairs section … but he was worried about the noise of the nightclub below, so I said, ‘I’ll take you there on the noisiest part of the week – 10 pm on a Saturday – and you can see how it feels’,” Ravi recalls.

When Jim turned up, alongside about 30 of his regular customers, only to find the nightclub near quiet and empty, both guys realised the opportunity. Why not combine both in one venue?

“And so we got our heads together, and long story short, Reload was born out of that.”

Over the years, Reload has birthed a number of offshoots by holding regular interstate (and even Oceanic) eSports events, creating virtual-reality content for government and private projects, and a video-game-themed childcare business called Active Gamers Australia (with three centres in Canberra and one in Sydney)

It’s these – as well as Jim’s day job in cybersecurity and Marc’s in corporate hospitality – that will keep the boys busy moving forward.

They initially looked to sell Reload and put it up for sale in February of last year.

“We’ve had a lot of interest and a couple of – albeit modest – offers, which we didn’t take,” Ravi says.

“We almost got there with one particular party that was going to take over the whole thing and run it for a while as is before changing it, but we got to the 11th hour, and the devil was in the detail, and it all fell apart sadly.

“We’ve got nobody barking down our door, demanding that we shut. It’s just a decision we’ve collectively made – the three of us – to move on to other things that we’re involved in.”

Ravi will maintain ownership of the building, and “remain very much connected to the health of the Sydney Building and the city”, and says there’s a “long list” of expressions of interest from businesses eager to move in.

As for the blue Tardis that stood out the front for many years – attracting selfies and people who had actually Googled “24-hour doctor Canberra” – that too sold about three weeks ago and now lives in a private garden in Belconnen, but Ravi says it did its job.

“We listed it with its own Google presence … and it was getting reviews, and the stats on Google we were getting on it were sensational, in line with our business itself.”

To commemorate its final month, Reload Bar and Games will host a series of special events, including Emo/Pop punk, K-Pop and Taylor Swift nights, a Simpsons Trivia game, a Mario-Kart tournament, UNO Deathmatch, Chrome (Goth/Industrial) games, Cosplay and a takeover of Verity Lane with added Slam Pro wrestling.

It will all come to an end with “a mega closing party” on Saturday, 22 March.

“We’ll have a number of events on the way up to it, which will appeal to slightly different segments of our sort of broader community, whereas for the final one, we really want to get everybody together.”

In a statement, the owners expressed their “heartfelt gratitude to the patrons, staff, and partners who have been part of the Reload journey”.

“They encourage everyone to join in the upcoming events to celebrate the memories created within the walls of Reload Bar and Games.”

Visit Reload for more information.