A Lydiard Street North venue will need to be completely refitted after a fire under the bar smoke-logged the building and adjacent businesses.
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Lydiard Street was closed between Mair and Sturt streets on Sunday afternoon as firefighters put out the fire caused by unattended heating elements at JD’s Sports Bar.
The bar’s Midnight Lounge will need to be cleared out and rebuilt, co-owner Leon Faustini said.
“Refitting out the Midnight Lounge is going to be the biggest cost, so we’re basically going to have to start again, it looks like.
“We’ve got designer wallpaper that’s been destroyed, cupboards need to be replaced, stock needs to be replaced, equipment needs to be replaced.”
The cost of the damage, which also affected the tea rooms upstairs, is still unknown.
Mr Faustini first learned of the fire when his brother logged into 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.” Mr Faustini was unable to say when the bar would reopen.
Firefighters forced entry to the bar shortly after 1pm where they found hot water heating elements had been left unattended and short-circuited, starting a fire under the bar.
“Our crews had to force entry and found the seed of the fire, they knocked it down very quickly and from there we went about trying to remove the smoke out of the building which was quite significant,” Ballarat City fire station officer Tony Hope said.
“Some of the adjoining buildings became smoke-logged and the restaurant area upstairs was smoke-logged and there was quite a lot of damaged food which had to be disposed of.”
Mr Hope said the cost to both JD’s Sports Bar and Alexandria on Lydiard would be “significant”.
The tea room was forced to cancel its first high tea and throw out all the food prepared for the afternoon, which was to start less than an hour after the fire was detected.