As Justin Hemmes buys in, the colourful Balmain-Rozelle pub scene keeps evolving

Tommy Richardson was licensee of Balmain’s West End Hotel – previously owned by notorious crime figure Abe Saffron – when it was a hardcore drinking venue for members of the Painters and Dockers’ Union in the early 1980s.

“That was their pub,” he says. “And half the gangsters in Sydney.”

It was towards the end of an era when the Balmain-Rozelle peninsula had one of the highest concentrations of pubs in Sydney – arguably only behind The Rocks – and drinkers included ship builders, boilermakers and factory workers from local industry.

“The people have changed,” Richardson, 88, says. Adds his wife Marilyn: “So many dogs and so many prams.”

The West End, on Mullens Street, has also changed. After refurbishment, the old Painters and Dockers’ watering hole reopened in 2013 as the much more family-friendly Balmain Hotel.

On a warm lunchtime, Richardson is the living intersection of the old and the new of the area’s pub scene. He and Marilyn are having a meal and a few drinks at Rozelle’s Sackville Hotel, well known for being the “Sacky-roos” during the soccer World Cup, which has just sold to billionaire hotelier Justin Hemmes for a cool $50 million.

Given Hemmes also owns Totti’s Rozelle, in the Three Weeds hotel on the other side of Victoria Road, the sale depends on merger clearance from competition watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Once the peninsula’s pub landscape was dominated by blue-collar watering holes, with colourful publicans, Tooheys and Resch’s on tap, poker machines, the trots on TV and hardened drinkers. There were plenty of knockabout places to play the brickie’s laptop – a pokie – in thongs and to order a burger and chips.

When Balmain was the location for the hit black and white sitcom My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours? in the 1960s, it was widely thought to be barely more than a slum. That was before generations of home-buyers discovered the area’s heritage charm and waterfront properties, its sense of community and the short ferry ride to the city.

If the Sackville deal is approved, Hemmes’ Merivale group will add to a pub gentrification that has brought upmarket dining – with The Dry Dock on Cameron Street won a chef’s hat this year – craft beers, expensive wine and cocktail lists, working fireplaces, dog-friendly bars and comfy lounges for watching sport on TV.

The Inner West Council’s heritage pub trail,  launched to revitalise the area and attract more visitors, extends from the Merton (on Victoria Road) to the East Village (on Darling Street in Balmain East) and back to Sydney Brewery Rozelle, which opened (on Mansfield Street) late last year.

According to the Balmain Rozelle Chamber of Commerce, there were once 55 pubs in the area. Now there are just 19.

Outsiders buying in

When Geoff Roddy headed a group that took over the Unity Hall Hotel on Darling Street in 2019, he lamented that “outsiders” had been buying and redeveloping historic local pubs. The hotel dates to 1875 and is considered by many as the birthplace of the Australian Labor Party, in 1891.

“I got sick of people from outside of Balmain buying our iconic pubs and turning them into bloody gymnasiums and cheese shops,” Roddy said at the time. “They’re ripping the heart and soul out of Balmain.”

It was a reference to the Exchange Hotel, on Beattie Street, becoming a cheese and wine bar and the Town Hall Hotel, on Darling Street, reopening as a gym.

The Exchange was converted – again – into serviced offices in 2020. It’s now set for another identity.

The receivers for five pubs owned by the failed Jon Adgemis-led Public Hospitality Group put the elegant three-storey building on the market recently. While not confirmed, it is rumoured to be selling to another Balmain pub owner for conversion into boutique short-stay accommodation with a bar downstairs.

Buying peninsula pubs and giving them a new look has been popular since Peninsula Hospitality, co-founded by former Merivale executive James Ingram and investor Mike Everett, bought the rundown Dry Dock in 2021, renovated extensively for almost two years and brought in ex Felix chef Ben Sitton to run a toney restaurant.

The old pub’s pokies were out. Well-off diners, and dogs, were in.

Ingram says they wanted to keep “the heart of a pub but run it like a sophisticated restaurant and bar … what people want these days is that food drives the participation and alcohol is the ancillary part of that experience”.

The Cat and Fiddle, towards the Rozelle end of Darling Street, closed last Sunday for renovation. There are plans for it to reopen under a new name in November. “We’re completely gutting the inside, moving the kitchen, and making it more of a food-focused venue,” said Mitchell Ward from Griffin Property group, which bought the hotel two years ago. “Just making it a family-friendly place.”

A makeover was also flagged for the East Village after local restaurateur Matt Turner took it over late last year.

Even the historic Unity Hall has upgraded.

After a renovation that cost more than $6 million, the former Workers Bar and accommodation upstairs have become a stylish restaurant, with room for a DJ to attract a younger crowd.

“Since I bought Dick’s [Hotel on Beattie Street] in 1991, we’ve lost a lot of hotels,” Roddy says. Among them, the Pacific Hotel on Stephen Street that featured in the late ’80s/early ’90s soapie E Street (it was converted into a home), Rozelle’s White Bay Hotel on Victoria Road (demolished after a fire) and, more recently, Birchgrove’s Sir William Wallace (closed but rumoured to be heading for a revival, after construction work, as a pub and whisky bar).

According to the 1991 book Called to the Bar: 150 Years of Pubs in Balmain & Rozelle, the area’s first hotel opened in Nicholson Street in 1842 to serve the residents of homes on recently subdivided land. It lasted three years before becoming a home.

“From that time on, hotels provided a basis for the social and political life of the growing suburb,” the authors wrote. “At this time, licensed hotels were open from 4am to 6pm and were required to have two sitting rooms and two sleeping rooms fit for public accommodation.”

As industry moved into the area, the number of pubs increased dramatically. Eight new venues opened in 1855 alone and another eight in 1878. They became drinking places for workers, early trade unionists, then later artists, writers, students, academics, criminals, lawyers and journalists. Drinkers were overwhelmingly men given that until the feminist movement of the 1960s, women were generally confined to “ladies’ parlours”.

The first wave of closures started with reduced trading hours and more stringent licensing requirements before World War I. More pubs closed during the Depression in the 1930s. Yet more closed when licensed clubs with entertainment became competition from the ’50s. Then more still when population changes included more families, bigger mortgages and less daily boozing.

According to M3 Property research, Australian pubs, bars and nightclubs are a $20 billion industry that is expected to keep thriving in the next five years despite declining beer consumption, especially among younger generations, and tough times economically.

Ben McDonald, from JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group, which handled the Sackville sale, says hoteliers have had to offer better dining and add low- and no-alcohol options to attract patrons. “The success of any pub is how well they really get the community and everyone involved,” he says.

When Maureen Thornett took over The Royal Oak, in College Street, almost 40 years ago, local industries meant Balmain pubs were bustling from 4pm to 7pm.

“It was really jumping,” she says. “Every pub was busy and people came here from lots of other suburbs because they didn’t have the same [appealing] hotels.”

While that popularity dipped with industry closures and more competition from pubs around the inner west, heritage renovations have brought some of that vibrancy back to the pub scene.

Thornett says 75 per cent of her patrons are local and the rest are visitors who are often meeting friends from the area or attending functions, “birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, funerals”, in the pub.

“Justin Hemmes coming here is very positive,” she says. “I think that will bring a lot of young people to the area.”

Renaissance or death knell

When Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne was growing up in Balmain, his schoolteacher parents would drink in local pubs that often had crowds spilling out onto the street at night. “They were real centres of community life,” he says. “When I was a kid, Balmain had already been gentrifying, but it was still very socially mixed.

“You’d literally have barristers and brickies who would drink together every day in the pub and be part of the same social circles. That spirit is still there. It’s still a fairly bohemian community and inclusive place but, obviously, it’s socio-economically far less mixed than it was.”

While restrictions on outdoor dining and drinking were introduced decades ago, Byrne believes there is potential in following Europe’s lead in allowing more outdoor socialising at night.

He also thinks the state government’s plan to build up to 8500 homes around the future Bays West metro station, near the Glebe Island port area, can revitalise Balmain nightlife.

“The Bays West development will either be the renaissance of Darling Street and the Balmain Peninsula or the death knell,” Byrne says. “Just about our highest priority in working with the government on the redevelopment will be creating permeability and walkability in between the new homes and Darling Street. We’ve got to deliberately design it to attract a new generation of people to Balmain and Rozelle pubs.”

Back at the Sackville, general manager Oban Seex has overseen the former Chez Blue French restaurant being turned into a sports bar that became a favourite for Socceroos fans during the World Cup. He thinks recent renovations have made the hotel more welcoming – “a bit more food focused, just more comfy and cosy”.

Recognising that Merivale is known for “more of a vibrant offering”, Seex believes customers are appreciating the new version of the Sackville. “People want something more than just a $15 schnitty and chips,” he says.

While Hemmes did not respond to a request for comment, Nine’s national editor for eating out and restaurants, Callan Boys, says he would be surprised if Merivale didn’t open a Queen Chow restaurant at the Sackville, given the area doesn’t have many Chinese restaurants.

In a pub scene that has kept evolving for more than 180 years, change is the one certainty.

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