Light-filled, vibrant and uplifting, Roses Cafe is a far cry from the crumbling school hall that it replaced. Photo: John Thistleton.
In 1997 when Woolworths wanted out of a lease of a large building in Goulburn’s main street, two businessmen new to commercial developments saw their chance. Their success in acquiring that site had profound consequences for the heritage city.
The building at 136 Auburn Street had been vacant for years, was on the market, boarded up and a prominent eyesore. Woolworths were opting out of their 20-year lease with 10 years remaining.
“We ended up in the boardroom of Woolworths negotiating this deal; we were ‘babes in the wood’ at this stage,” accountant Steve Jones said.
The building’s owner, a Sydney button manufacturer, wanted $1.6 million for his property. Of this figure, Woolworths paid $1 million to escape the remainder of their lease.
In the meantime, Steve and his partner and builder Robert Rampton had secured a prized tenant, the Australian Government’s Centrelink agency. Now they needed $600,000 to complete the deal.
Robert recalls the last-minute financing. National Australia Bank manager Alan Stephens travelled to Sydney to convince his bosses to approve their $600,000 loan.
They secured their long-term tenant and the equity to continue enhancing key Goulburn precincts with imagination and risk-taking. They teamed up with Frazer Roberts in 2007 and relocated the Big Merino. That remarkable story will follow this one.
Years later they didn’t have much in mind when they first bought a rear corner block on the old St Patrick’s school precinct on a corner of Verner Street and Cartwright Place.
“It was just a good site in the middle of town,” Steve said, revealing their initial plan was for several villas.
About this time in 2013 Woolworths and Big W were circling potential sites on either end of the central business district and the old St Pat’s precinct. One proponent had approval to flatten the former 1938 St Patrick’s technical school and proposed demolishing the school hall and acquiring the remaining land from the Catholic Church for a Big W development.
Abbey Motel guests regularly compliment Steve Jones and Robert Rampton on ‘restoring’ the building, so closely does the new work resemble the original hall next door, which they decided to turn into a cafe. Photo: John Thistleton.
But ultimately Steve and Robert secured more of the precinct when the previous owner went into liquidation and receivers stepped in and called for tenders. While there was strong interest for the site, the Goulburn partners were the sole tenderers. They then bought the remaining portions of the old school site after more than three years of protracted negotiations with the Catholic Church.
Aware of Goulburn’s shortage of motel rooms, they were going to build a 60-room motel. But they reduced this to 40 rooms when Quest submitted plans for a new motel on the former Marian College precinct.
They built and sold seven villas on the back section of the old school precinct, raising enough to fund an $800,000 restoration of the 1913 hall back to its bare bones. Old toilets and awning were demolished, and Bowral Bricks was able to match the original bricks to rebuild the front section. Broken windows were replaced and new roof tiles were installed.
Working with architect Tim Lee, they matched the Abbey’s frontage to the restored St Patrick’s Hall, finessing the final structure after multiple reviews.
“We would have modified that 15 times to get the right look,” Steve said. “We would stand across the street and ask, how are we going to make that brick look, how will the petitions work? Will we do them at an angle? That blue brick in between there, how much of that are we going to do to make it fit in with [St Pat’s Hall].”
A Sydney foundry made new wrought iron balustrades for the Roses Cafe building and a Western Australia fabricator supplied pressed metal ceilings matching the original ceilings inside Roses and in the Abbey Motel. Photo: David Carmichael (DTC Photography).
Another crucial question was choosing an occupant for the old hall. Originally it was going to be part of the Abbey Motel.
“We wanted to get a food outlet, not only for the motel but something that was nice for the building,” Robert said. “We went and had a talk to (cafe owners) Michael and Carole Rose and they were keen.”
Nevertheless, the partners had to offer incentives to lure them from their prime position opposite Belmore Park to the present location.
The global outbreak of COVID-19 threatened the novice moteliers’ latest project.
“It was in June 2020; everything was locked down, so we had a slow progression of openings and reopenings and shutdowns,” Steve said. “We came out of it in 2022 and the momentum picked up to the point now where we are almost full every night of the week.”
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