Great use of mixing the old with the new. Cant wait to go and check out the place! Well done!

Awesome - another inviting place for the louts to gather and further propagate the stigma Ballarat has of being the "Bronx" of Melbourne...

How is this news? This is just free advertising for a new drinking hole, I fail to see the significance of it as news. Who cares if they have spent millions on doing up another dilapidated old building in Ballarat, why aren't the reporters out there chasing up some real stories?

I love the mix of an old blue stone building and the tin shed......

oh Tim. The fact that you have taken the time to read and furthermore comment, clearly deems this story newsworthy. Albeit free publicity. Hopefully, this place will remain classy as it seems and not be another 'Bended Elbow' turnaround into a feral nightspot.

Luke, your optimism is commendable, however, give it 48 hours and there will be spilled booze, spew (and worse) all over the floor - and bogans fighting out the front - just like every other club in Ballarat. I hope at the very least this establishment has agreed to abide by the lockout/curfew etc...

Its a commendable effort , however the greatest obstacle will be the terrestrial bogan population of Ballarat. Artists and creatives like myself will not be going anywhere close to such a bogan magnet. Its not just Ballarat though - its a cultural problem that Australia has developed. What confuses the matter further is the bogans once had their own scummy places where they could beat each other senseless and were fairly easily identifiable. They should just stick to the burbs - they choose to live there so let them make something of it. If they cant, well thats their problem. A good example of a proactive community is Brunswick, prob the safest and most considerate place in Melbourne, populated by creative folk who care about the people and place they live in, but come the weekends the suburbans invade and, well - you can imagine the rest. There is a reason people create cool places and set up kwirky small businesses - its to be away from the dominant culture that is defined by commercial TV, franchised shopping malls and armchair athletes. Its the luck country all right - lucky if your a bogan...