FIRST it was a bank, then it was a bar - once deemed the best in Australia - but soon it will be another vacant premises in Newcastle.
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Reserve, on the corner of Hunter and Bolton streets, will close its doors in coming weeks after a two-year struggle with dwindled trade.
"Unfortunately, Newcastle CBD's fortunes have written the end of the story for us," owner Tim Bohlsen said.
It is an ironic outcome for a business in a city that has had over half a billion dollars spent on its revitalisation.
But it is one that has become all too familiar.
Mr Bohlsen said the "business conditions" did "just not work anymore".
"It's frustrating given what we've been through, the awards we've won and the consistently good feedback over the whole time," he said.
Mr Bohlsen said revenue in the past year was "60 per cent lower than what it was" in the first year of operation almost six years ago.
"And what dried up there was foot traffic," he said.
"Back then, we were probably about fifty-fifty between bookings and walk-ins.
"Foot traffic and walk-ins, that's [now] basically a zero. It's worse walking through this end of town now than what it was 10 years ago."
He nominated the closure of Newcastle train station as a "tipping point" of trade downfall, but said there was multiple reasons behind the struggle of city businesses.
Reserve had pinned its hopes on trade returning to what it was before works commenced on Watt Street in preparation for Supercars and later the light rail build.
Mr Bohlsen said government and civic marketing campaigns during the light rail build had been a failure.
He said city businesses were repeatedly told to hang out for the "light at the end of the tunnel", but an uplift in trade had not transpired.
"All of the government money that was supposed to revitalise in here has been spent," he said.
"It hasn't done it.
"It has actually made things worse because it hasn't recovered from the decimation of what it took to do all those things."
Mr Bohlsen said nearby residential developments and the Honeysuckle campus may bring more people into the city, but they were still at least "two years away", which the business could not hold out for.
While a lack of parking has been lamented as a cause of problems for some other businesses, Mr Bohlsen said parking was readily available in the area after 5pm.
"The perception was you couldn't get there and there was no parking," he said.
"Parking is pretty tight during the day ... [but] for some of the really bad times, we could walk outside and see 10 car parks."
At its peak, Reserve had 10 staff working on busy nights, reduced to about five in recent years.
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