Meyers Place, the iconic small bar that kickstarted Melbourne’s laneway culture, has closed for good. The roller door shut temporarily in March last year, but now it won’t be coming back up. The culprit? Covid, of course.

“It’s quite disappointing,” says co-owner Drew Pettifer. “I know we’re not the only place in that boat, but it’s obviously quite disappointing.”

Before 1994, to serve drinks bars also had to serve food. Then the legislation changed. Overnight, hundreds of sites across town – and in the CBD especially – became viable for prospective bar owners. Freed from the cumbersome, space-intensive requirements of having a kitchen, many of the tiny hole-in-the-wall locations scattered throughout Melbourne’s laneways became small bars. And Meyers Place was one of the first.

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With its long concrete bar, wood panelling, largely upcycled furniture and cheap drinks scribbled on a chalkboard, Meyers was instrumental in shaping the blueprint for what a “Melbourne” bar should look and feel like. It’s a formula that’s since been riffed on and subverted countless times, and its influence is still noticeable in the bars opening today.

The original Meyers Place location closed in 2017, but the bar moved just around the corner to Crossley Street in 2019 (along with a large chunk of the longstanding fit-out).

But by the time the pandemic took hold, the bar hadn’t yet recouped the costs associated with the relocation. “And obviously Covid-19 was the spanner in the works that interrupted that process and business plan,” says Pettifer.

After the first lockdown, it was blow after blow – a story we’re all too familiar with. Capacity limits. Being left at the mercy of landlords. A second lockdown. Then another one.

“[It] hit hard for smaller venues, where your capacity is more limited – and Melbourne prides itself on having those small venues, which are more intimate,” Pettifer says. “It’s like being invited into someone’s lounge room.

“Coming to Meyers Place, you knew you were coming into a quaint, intimate space where you may even know the staff, and you know the playlist will be to your liking. That sort of thing ... doesn’t apply when you have lockdown and restrictions as a result of the pandemic.”

So, Pettifer and co-owner Heather Lakin had little choice but to enter voluntary liquidation. Earlier this week, Pettifer learned that liquidators had been unable to find a buyer for Meyers. Now, the laneway legend is poised to become one of Melbourne hospitality’s most high-profile casualties since the pandemic started.

But the roller door is ever so slightly ajar.

“If someone wanted to take on Meyers Place, it would be great if we could have that continuity with the handing of the baton – which I think is also an added bonus. You get the history that comes with that, not just that space.”

Pettifer – who started out as a bartender at Meyers in 2004, during his undergrad degree, before eventually buying into the business – is now a senior lecturer at RMIT. And while he’s stepping back from hospo and the scene-shaping bar he once ran, he has hope for the industry and the CBD’s bars. So long as they get support.

“I think, post-Covid, hospitality will have shifted the way it operates, and my fear is that small venues may be the hardest hit by that,” he says.

“Melbourne’s CBD has an enviable reputation for being a late-night city where you can go out and find good food, good bars pretty much around the clock. The risk is that if there isn’t the support necessary to bring that back, then the city could drastically change.

“Meyers Place was born because there was a wasteland in the city after dark; you got to a certain time of day and there was nowhere to go and drink. If it gets to the stage where the city is a fading star, hopefully there’ll be a second wave of hospo that can bring back a resurgence.”