The Lydiard Street North bar will have missed its biggest trading days by the time it re-opens in the first half of next year, co-owner Leon Faustini said.

The owners are waiting on a report by Heritage Victoria and a final figure to be agreed on by the insurance company before the refit can begin. 

 “At this stage it looks like a realistic re-opening is somewhere around Easter if all the ducks get in their rows and we can finally do some building,”  Mr Faustini said. 

“The big thing for us is that we're missing the big part of the year, we missed the AFL grand final, we missed now Melbourne Cup, we'll miss the Christmas break.

“(Those events are) pretty much our bread and butter, it's really hard to put a figure on that loss.”

The heritage listed building was smoke-logged by the September fire, which started under the main bar.

Mr Faustini was alerted to the fire when his brother logged onto their internal camera system. 

“He discovered the bar was on fire because he logged into our camera system and couldn’t see anything except smoke,” he said on the day.