New cafe for the Health Precinct
Hospitality business partners Bill Ness and Alex Brackstone have the recovery of central Christchurch front of mind with their Pegasus Arms plans.
In about six weeks they want to open a new ‘‘Pegasus Print’’ cafe above the Pegasus Arms that has served as an inner city pub with outdoor options.
The cafe will be open from 6am until noon to serve those working in the nearby hospital and health sector.
The pair bought the pub in a 50:50 venture in May 2011 having been hit hard by the September 2010 and February 2011 quakes.
They had been operating the Bard on Avon, on the corner of Gloucester St and Oxford Tce, Vespa, in Poplar Lane, and His Lordships, in His Lordships Lane.
‘‘We picked this up as a bit of a kneejerk reaction because we’d had three pubs (destroyed),’’ Ness said.
The move to a new location was helped by breweries and by advice from an insurance broker, Brackstone said. A lot of painting and floor restoration work was done to improve the pub.
Brackstone was brought up in Cardiff, Wales, and involved in hospitality from a young age. ‘‘My first job was probably making coffee at age 14 in a place. It was just an easy way to make money.’’
Despite a university degree and working at American Express for five years in the United Kingdom, a move to New Zealand meant a change back into hospitality.
She started working for Ness at the Bard and the pair started a business partnership, involving different ownership structures.
For example, while they started as equal shareholders of the Pegasus Arms, that business is now fully owned by Ness with Brackstone as a business development manager.
They run the recreated Vespa bar, by Stranges Lane, in a 50:50 business relationship.
The Vespa was reopened in November 2013, and has seen patronage rise and fall with the trends followed by the young Christchurch crowd.
They say while the Pegasus future is not entirely certain, they want the bar to be a positive part of the health precinct, in which it is included.
They have put in a lot of work with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to demonstrate the value of the Pegasus. They have a renewable lease on the Pegasus property that can take them forward 18 years with the business.
On Friday with staff and patrons they celebrated 25 years to the day since the bar first opened. Prior to being a bar it was a Pegasus Print business, publishing works including some by novelist Janet Frame. Prior to that the property was owned by a doctor.
The pub was very popular in the early days, among its main city rivals, The Occidental and the Grenadier Hotel, the owners remember.
While neither of the pair were with the Pegasus a quarter of a century ago, Ness has been long involved in hospitality, having converted a bank site on Lincoln Rd into The Miller Bar in the early 1990s and later converted a Pizza Hut in Pages Rd into a neighbourhood tavern, Bickertons.