THE inner-city park adjoining the Commonwealth Bank building, Central Park, and the AMP building has had a hospitality injection, with three new ventures joining the area’s long-established coffee mecca, Ecucina.
Facing the park on the south side is Japanese restaurant Shiro Izakaya, which opened at the beginning of this year, as did The Deck Café and Lounge.
These will be joined by The Grand Central Bar and Restaurant, which fronts St Georges Terrace at the base of the CBA building, later this year.
Adrian and Ilia Gastevski own The Deck and Grand Central, and together the venues are the sixth in the brothers’ portfolio, alongside suburban pubs Whale and Ale, Cornerstone, Sovereign Arms, the Craftsmen, and a Thirsty Camel bottle shop.
The Gastevskis had been looking for an inner-city venue for several years prior to securing the 150 St Georges Terrace sites, believing location to be a top priority when it came to cracking the CBD market.
The Deck manager Holli Macumber, speaking on behalf of Adrian Gastevski, said the location was chosen for its centrality on the terrace and its prominence, given The Deck was in the central park thoroughfare.
Competition from the multi-level food and beverage venue across the road at the City Square development, dubbed Print Hall, was another attraction for the CBA building location, according to Ms Macumber.
“Any competition is good; it just means we up our standards and we’ll feed off each other and pitch to different markets,” she said.
The Deck and Grand Central recently received liquor licences and, in a first for Perth, the neighbouring venues fall under the same licence.
This means the walkway between the venues will be licensed after 5pm, when the bank closes, allowing customers to walk between the venues without having to finish their drinks.
That will help to facilitate the vision for the two venues working in synch, with The Deck eventually to stay open from 4pm as a bar that serves tapas, complementing the more formal restaurant and larger bar in Grand Central, with a capacity of 440.
The restaurant is yet to open, and plans are in place to commence operations in July once the fit-out is complete.
Staggering the openings of the venues was a deliberate move to allow the coffee shop to get established.
“The idea was to launch the cafe first. We took the view that turning a bar into a cafe would be much more difficult for the public to accept than if we turned the cafe into a bar,” Ms Macumber said.
“I think we could have struggled if we had opened as a bar first and then tried to be a bar that was pouring great coffee. We wanted to be a great coffee destination that was also pouring liquor after hours.”
According to Ms Macumber The Deck has grown its food offering on the back of a strong coffee business, and is now working to build its food trade, with fresh produce made on-site starting to build a following.
A pre-order website and application have also been set up, which allows coffee and food orders to be placed ahead of time with an order-tracking function, and the uptake of that has helped to boost business.
Grand Central will be the final jewel in the crown for owner of the CBA building, Phoenix Property, which has been working for years to get the ventures up and running.
