THE Family Hotel on Newcastle West’s Hunter Street has come full circle, re-opening on Thursday with the name it carried for close to 60 years. 

Owners and licensees have come and gone, and The Family Hotel became Duck’s Nuts Hotel in 1999 and Silk Hotel in 2008. 

Silk Hotel received negative press in early 2015 when licensee Vasilis Moshos was banned from the liquor industry for 10 years by the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority for “failure to comply with licence conditions and engaging in activities likely to encourage misuse or abuse of alcohol”.

And this year it made headlines when two women seeking refuge were referred to the hotel which housed, among others, male prisoners on parole. 

Licensee Steven Forbes is the man tasked with overhauling the hotel’s interior – and its reputation. 

Mr Forbes grew up in Mayfield and attended Merewether High School. He worked with Jamie Wirth’s Drink N Dine group and was licensee and part-owner of The Oxford Tavern in Petersham. After gutting the run-down tavern, Mr Forbes got rid of the pokies and re-launched in December 2013 with a focus on “good food, good drinks and good times”.  

It went on to win Best New Pub of the Year at the Australian Bar Awards 2014.

Mr Forbes is using the same strategy at The Family Hotel. 

He told the Herald he not only hopes to win another “best pub” award, but to demonstrate how well-run pubs can become a community hub and contribute towards uplifting neglected parts of the city.