Leura Garage loss is another dead canary in our dire tourism coal mine

February 19, 2023

Leura Village is a famous hub for visitors to the Blue Mountains to quality shop and dine and to enjoy the village’s relaxed country leafy charm.

A vital asset is Leura Garage Café Restaurant Bar which for over a decade since first opening in 2011 has been one of the Blue Mountains most popular eateries.

Yet, on January 25 in 2023 (within a month ago) this long thriving eatery in Leura, immensely popular with visitors to the Blue Mountains, was forced to close its doors for the last time.

Leura Garage Café – a vibrant, bustling, sought-after Mountains eatery destination

Why?

Hospitality entrepreneur and owner, James Howarth, says it all started back from the governmental lockdown impost of the bushfire mega-blaze emergency. That effectively cut off all visitation access to our Blue Mountains Region (Dec 2019-Jan 2020) and so denied his café of clientele.

The bushfire disaster was back-to-back followed by the East Coast Low torrential downpour events from February 2020, then that was back-to-back followed (tripple whammy) by the government’s pandemic lockdowns which endured for two years more or less between March 2020 and March 2022.

But oddly enough, the final straw for Mr Howarth was POST-lockdown!

Whilst trying to get back on his feet and wisely planning his next year ahead for his business in January 2023, Mr Howarth was unable to re-negotiate a lease with his landlord that “made commercial sense”, imposing on him financially no option but to shut down his retail business and to wind it up into voluntary liquidation.

The successful hospitality entrepreneurship story of Leura Garage has now gone permanently. It is like so many others.

The forced closure has left Mr Howarth feeling “gutted” after his successful conversion of what was originally an old automotive garage into a popular eatery, had come to an end after twelve years.

Inman’s Railway Garage in 1983. Circa 2008, Greg Inman sold the premises and relocated his motor garage business to Katoomba’s industrial area at Unit 1/64 Govett Street. This author had his car serviced by Railway Garage since. Greg subsequently sold his motor garage business and then retired. Meanwhile, this original site on Railway Parade was converted to a restaurant from scratch by 2011, situated where the Holden fastback Torana is shown parked.

Seems another greedy landlord destroys another successful business which was doing more than its share to add vitality to the Blue Mountains visitor experience?

Was the landlord just passing on increasing costs? But to what end – vacancy?

Mr Howarth:

“It’s been devastating. Who would have thought that such a successful business would end up this way?”

He then watched on as the liquidators removed everything from the building, and his creation.

Nothing left of his thriving eatery after the liquidators went in and seized all ‘assets’ as they do. The greedy landlord has foolishly lost a reliable long-term tenant, so who’d frankly take on the risk now?

Mr Howarth:

“It was a very upsetting week … because everything we put into the place was taken away. It was really gutting.”

One gets to rely on a business being a going concern – owners, staff, suppliers, customers alike

Mr Howarth said he had struggled to keep going, trying to do everything to retain his staff of 30 comprised of full-time, part-timers and casuals.

This business closure reflects not just upon the demise of Mr Howarth’s local hospitality business in Leura, but upon the adverse impact on these many employees, most likely local.

Consider their dependence on their work at Leura Garage to support their costs of living, financial commitments, dependants, plans, etc!

Replacement work income is not easy to find, especially in the regions and especially at a pinch. It is likely most will struggle and face personal challenges over the next few months or so and perhaps suffer including their mental heath – but in no way their fault.

Mr Howarth:

“That was our biggest concern. We had such an incredible team of people.

Obviously we’re very proud of what we have achieved over the years but more so because we have had so many great customers … who keep coming back.

During the pandemic and especially after the pandemic, they were very grateful we were there and we were grateful to them.”

The Leura Garage team – Nina, Josie, James and Anika Howarth. [Picture Facebook]. The death knell started for Leura Garage, as for so many others, with the bushfires of 2019.

Leura Garage has been a leading light in sustainability measures, with solar panels, rainwater storage, energy efficient lighting and natural ventilation.

Mr Howarth also installed a super composter machine called ‘Chloe‘ which dramatically reduced the amount of organic waste going to landfill while at the same time creating great fertiliser for gardens. The machine produced dehydrated product for Blackheath Community Gardens as well as helping supply compost to the GoLlies (gardeners of Leura), who recycled it back on to the village’s gardens.

But Chloe, too, is now gone. It was deemed by the liquidators to have been an asset of the business.

Entrepreneur James with his super composter machine initiative, he dubbed ‘Chloe’

In a message on Facebook, Mr Howarth wrote:

“Leura Garage Restaurant stood the test of time as a leading Blue Mountains tourism enterprise and enjoyed the mutual affection of our local community.

Many accolades and industry awards including a recent Gold Award from the Restaurant and Catering Association plus recognition in the SMH Good Food Guide affirm that success and enduring popularity.”

…

A Blue Mountains tourism business thriving pre-government lockdowns…

A consequence of government disconnect with tourism

Mr Howarth said he is likely to take a “bit of a break” now but wanted to point out that his other business, Pizza Sublime down the street in Leura Mall, “lives on”.

Pizza Sublime at 187A Leura Mall – closed when we took the photo early in the morning, but happily continues to trade: ^https://pizzasublime.com.au/

Leura Garage is not the only retail tenant victim in Leura, indeed across the upper Central Blue Mountains tourist villages and towns.

It’s 2023 and governments have suddenly declared taypayers are all out of imposed social-economic lockdowns (bushfires, landslides, pandemics) so just get on with it! 2019-2022 anni horribiles are over, there’s no more government compo, so get back to business as usual!

In their dreams. So where are the constant big spending tourist crowd numbers pre-lockdowns?

What disconnect with locally struggling small retail businesses such as those in Leura, reliant on tourist visitation denied by government for those recent three years!

Tourist visitation has not recovered to pre-lockdown normality nor approaching anything like it, because international tourism has not recovered – the prime demand market.

And visitation forecasts indicate that it could be many years before international tourism does recover.

For Leura Mall’s shopping precinct, retail continues to suffer for a multiple reasons which governments seem to be oblivious to.

Could bubble government give a toss about how tough tourism/retail business cost pressures are impacting local private enterprise? NO!

An Analysis:

Consider:

International travel demand drop off – heightened travel costs, increased risks, more hassles, inflation, compounded costs of living pressures putting off travel
Blue Mountains bad publicity over many years – such as repeated bushfire emergency and lockdowns.
Visitor access restrictions – 3 bushfire disaster declarations 2019-2020, landslips closing rail and road access (2020), derailment extended closure (2023), ongoing landslips closing most of the Blue Mountains world heritage area, rail track work on many weekends, two years of pandemic lockdowns (2020-2022), council pebblecreting denying pedestrian access to local retail (2022).
Rising costs of council’s commercial rates, retail rents, landlord neglect of premises, Australia’s eight interest rate rises in 6 months impacting property investors such as the owner of retail premises like Leura Garage, who likely has to pay a mortgage with an ever increasing higher interest component. The landlord simply passes on the hikes to the retail tenant.
Other operating cost pressures – food supplies, staffing, utilities, insurances, tax
Suppressed consumer demand being insufficient to break-even let alone make a profit.

This is a response to inflationary pressures brought on by mainly excessive government spending (post-lockdown)

With retail and tourism entrepreneurs being driven to the wall and so forcing private enterprise to close, the consequences for the Blue Mountains are fewer offerings for visitors:

Fewer eateries
Fewer attractions
Fewer retail shops
Fewer events
Fewer artistic offerings – galleries, live music, performances
Fewer tour offerings
Many hiking tracks closed
Mindset absence of governmental support/interest in local tourism

The compounded combination of all this is causing a thinning out of rich tourism experience that Blue Mountains once had as an international destination and draw card for visitation.

This ‘thinning out’ risks becoming an irreversible socio-economic transition from Blue Mountains tourism to Blue Mountains urban – a death to Blue Mountains destination tourism by a thousand government cuts.

Recently captured visitation statistics to the Blue Mountains measured over time would be instructional to learn.

Could this be a permanent transition (as a consequence of a pervasive Sydney-centric sprawl culture, in which the Blue Mountains (like other hinterland regions) is being swallowed up by an ever ‘greater’ Sydney conurbation.

The ever widening Great Western Highway/M4 is transforming the Blue Mountains from its destination status and appeal into a rolled out 80kph 4-lane M4-extended motorway for Sydney travellers heading further west, else a mere outer urban real estate bargain fringe zone.

As the local retailers move out, the real estate profiteers have already taken up prime retail reality presence. An observed trend since the start of government imposed pandemic lockdown term is that equity rich Sydney-siders are buying up Blue Mountains real estate as investment properties and weekenders-come AirBnbs.

There are purportedly now approaching nigh 500 AirBnb type temporary accommodation houses throughout the Upper Blue Mountains in particular. This has out-priced local renters (predominantly young, elderly and disadvantaged) out of this market. So the demographic is changing quickly.

The AirBnb/Stayz/Bookings.com et al foreign invasion is all but undermining local accommodation establishments, many of high quality.

With private enterprise closing, this means fewer jobs and less tax revenue to governments. Public servant jobs will be next to cop the impact. No-one is immune.

We walked around Leura Mall this week following the above sad closure news of Leura Garage in the local Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper. We discover that Mr Horwarth is not the only Leura retail victim.

Recall the long-established Silks Brasserie nearby in Leura Mall? The landlord jacked up the rent, so the Silks business packed up and relocated to ‘Silvermere’ in Wentworth Falls.

We shall review these retail victims in a coming article.

Author of this article is Steve, Nature Trail’s Tour Director. Steve is a local of the Blue Mountains since 2001 and has a keen interest and concerns in what is happening in the Blue Mountains. Steve has extensive experience in outdoor tour operating, in small business operating, as well as a career in corporate business analysis and various other eclectic fields of endeavour. He holds numerous qualifications listed here.