Lack of customers closes the Fitzroy Hotel
Mesh Hotels Pty Limited, the company that runs the 165 year old Fitzroy Hotel in Windsor out at Hawkesbury, has been put in liquidation.
That comes eight months after the owners Jennie and Philip Young had purchased the lease from previous long-term owners Rebecca and Troy Mifsud.
According to Jennie Young, there was a simple reason: not enough people were coming to Windsor. As a result, she believes the Hawkesbury Council needs to step in and take charge.
“Sadly, it’s true. Admittedly we had the odd good night, but it wasn’t consistently good trading,” Mrs Young told the Hawkesbury Gazette.
“There just doesn’t seem to be the people [in Windsor] and the rent is really quite high. It’s very sad because it’s a bit of a Windsor icon.
“This year is actually its 165th birthday and we were hoping to do some celebratory activities. However the bills were just piling up and the people were not coming in in sufficient numbers to sustain the expenses.
“We have some regular customers who are just wonderful - very loyal - but you have to be able to pay your bills, you have to be able to pay your staff, and it reached the point where we don’t feel that we can do either based on the revenue we get, based on our patronage.”
The Youngs, who had both worked as school teachers had bought the hotel back in July, hoping it would provide them with some income in their retirement.
The family used to live in Oakville and they were delighted to be back again.
“I love the area - that was one of The Fitz’s draw cards, the location. I was happy living here, and I wanted to be part of it again,” Ms Young said.
“I don’t regret it. It was wonderful to be in the Hawkesbury again - I’d missed it. It’s kind of a case of: ‘let’s buy a pub’, she said. ‘It’ll be fun’, she said. And it was! It was wonderful. It was really, really good fun - but not sustainable.
“You can’t have your staff coming into work if you can’t guarantee you’ll be able to pay them. We had to make that difficult decision.”
by Leon Gettler, March 20th 2017
