First look at Crown Street's rooftop bar Humber: images

Still covered by three storeys worth of hoardings, the Humber Kitchen Bar and Rooftop is another sign that things are turning around in the CBD.

Director Adam Murphy said Humber would feature a retro 1950s style cafe and kitchen on the ground floor, a central bar under a huge chandelier on the second floor, and a rooftop bar on the third.

And the doors aren’t all that far from opening.

‘‘The cafe will be open towards the end of this month and we’ll be opening up the other two levels some time in November,’’ Mr Murphy said.

‘‘All the trades are very busy working at the moment. We had the same thing that GPT had with the rain. We’re putting another storey on so with all the rain for a few weeks that set us back.

‘‘It’s going to be very different to anything that’s been in Wollongong before. The fit-out alone is worth around a million dollars and the base building works is another million.

‘‘So for a small building, it’s quite a large spend.’’

He said the owners had been looking for an appropriate site for the project for three years but were drawn to the site at the end of Crown Lane because of the history of the building and their just-opened neighbour.

‘‘Obviously without GPT here, and it just being a lot of old shops all shut up, it would have obviously been a lot less attractive to us,’’ he said.

‘‘There were lots of opportunities here and we believe this end of town will be a growth area for Wollongong.’’

He said the efforts of Wollongong City Council had made it easier for venues like Humber to open up in the city, and change the face of the CBD.

‘‘I’d definitely say over the last five to 10 years the changes with the city centre revitalisation and the night-time economy and a lot of the policies that have been driven by council are making it easier for people to move forward than it was,’’ he said.

‘‘And you can see that in the amount of small bars and small players that are in the market compared to 10 years ago when there was only five large clubs around.’’

And then there’s their GPT neighbours, which Mr Murphy said was a ‘‘game-changer’’ for Wollongong.

‘‘The difference to a normal development, whether it be a Shellharbour or whatever is that GPT have really invested in the community and the locals, and invested in doing something very different,’’ he said.

‘‘They could have saved money and done something a lot cheaper and easier but they’ve gone out there and made a big bang from it. They’ve almost created a new community around it as well.’’

The next 10 years will be an exciting time for Wollongong, according to panellists at Thursday’s Illawarra Property Council lunch.

The  lunch, which coincided with the opening day of GPT’s Wollongong Central, focused on the increase in investment in the CBD.

Panellists included Wollongong Central development manager Steven Turner, architects Rice Daubney and Susanne Pini, and Humber bar director Adam Murphy.

Asked what they saw for Wollongong over the next decade, the general consensus was that things were looking good.

‘‘I think Wollongong will be surprised itself with where it ends up – even given what it’s aiming at now,’’ Mr Turner said.

He also said the city could expect to see more big developments like Wollongong Central.

Mr Murphy said Wollongong was moving down the ‘‘Melbourne path’’ in terms of the street feel, the culture, art and bars.

Ms Pini said she and her husband bought a unit in Wollongong 20 years ago and held onto it because they were always waiting for something to happen.

‘‘Wollongong is always in our minds as being on the cusp of greatness,’’ Ms Pini said.

‘‘In 10 years we won’t be on the cusp any more, we will be there.’’

Mr Turner said the final project unveiled on Thursday was bigger than initially planned, with the three-block revitalisation of Keira Street – including the outdoor dining component of Wollongong Central – not part of the original plan.

But the development was far from the end of investment and growth in the CBD.

‘‘There’s no sign of that stopping now,’’ he said.

‘‘There’s been a massive turnaround in two years.’’

Ms Pini spoke about the team effort that went into creating the building, which included representations of the Illawarra flame tree carved into the exterior walls.

‘‘It’s not a building that the place deserved, as people have said to us, but a building deserving of the place. I hope we achieved that.’’ 

Lube Markovski, a franchise partner in Grill’d Healthy Burgers and a previous owner of a number of other businesses in the CBD, said there was no reason why the city couldn’t go on to bigger and better things.

‘‘Why Wollongong? I’d probably turn that around and say ‘why not Wollongong?’,’’ Mr Markovski said.

‘‘We’re at the start of something that’s actually going to blow you away. I don’t think we’re going to recognise Wollongong in the next five years.’’