The Daily moving, Public House closes
Palmerston North’s bars have had a shakeup as two close and a third looks to move.
Popular nightclub and sports bar The Daily, owned by Ricky Quirk, will move just a few doors down on Main St next to a new site next to Shooters Bar.
Meanwhile, Public House, also owned by Quirk, has closed.
Barrel and Crate on Fitzherbert Ave has also not opened this week, but management declined to comment.
Quirk said The Daily’s move from its location on the corner of Main St and The Square had ‘‘been on the cards’’ for a while.
It was motivated by the desire to get out of its current earthquake-prone building and into a purpose-built one and would ‘‘definitely’’ happen this year.
Quirk said he had ‘‘inherited’’ the building space, and was limited by what he could do with it.
‘‘It is a fairly old building we’re in, we’ve made the best of what we can.’’
The new site will be between Shooters and Kelly’s Supermall, where he planned to establish two separate bars; a sports bar and a dedicated night club.
‘‘What happens now is about 10pm to 11pm the young ones turn up and sort of flush the older ones out.’’
Quirk said he also planned to develop Berrymans Lane with a beer garden.
He was working with the Palmerston North City Council to improve the area.
The upgrade was expected to cost $700,000.
‘‘I’d like to spend less, but it is just the sheer magnitude of what we are doing.’’
The current building did not have enough female toilets and he hoped a new site could remedy that.
Quirk said he was waiting on building consents, and it would be business as usual in the meantime.
The decision to close Public House, on Church St, had been made so he could concentrate on other bars.
Quirk said the bar had been doing OK financially, but it was a difficult environment.
‘‘You can only have so many bars. Palmy is still effectively a Friday and Saturday night town.
‘‘The bulk of people still come out after 10pm on those nights, but you are still paying for seven days a week, it is not always viable.’’
The weekend patrons still offered enough to get by, but there needed to be a lot of them, he said.