Same old story 

For seven years business owners and citizens have pondered the future of the old Commercial Hotel.

Yet, some 2500 days after its closure, little about the future of the two-storey, 170-plus year-old-building is known. 

The block was purchased at auction by a Yass-based syndicate in September of 2010. 

“We’ve got plenty of ideas… I certainly wouldn’t like it to be sitting there for another 10 years, that’s for sure,” the syndicate’s spokesman Warren Hall said soon after purchase.

His comments were published in the Yass Tribune’s September 24, 2010 edition. 

His tune, the better part of three years on, remains the same.

Mr Hall was unable to shed any new light on the situation when contacted by the Tribune this week. It’s understood little, if any, of the building will change aesthetically in the short-term future.

The site of a rotting veranda, graffiti-ridden boarded-up entrances and the odd smashed window is stark in contrast to the early noughties, when the venue served as one of three Comur Street pubs and seven licensed bars in town.

Sue Gaffney, along with her ex-husband Mick and former Yass couple Kel and Margaret Tilden, owned, leased or managed the hotel from 1988 through to 2002. 

Its current state is unacceptable, Mrs Gaffney says. 

“It’s devastating. It had beautiful antique fittings and furniture in there. The place has been vandalised,” she said.

In times of full trade, the Commercial contained two bars, a restaurant, beer garden, hotel rooms and a bottle-shop. Two Comur Street-facing offices were leased out to the Commonwealth. 

“It’s heartbreaking to think how it is now,” Mrs Gaffney continued. 

“In full swing we had two shopfronts downstairs that were leased by the government and the bottle-shop was running. 

“When we first took it over [in 1988], every room was booked because of the bypass… It was a typical, old country pub.” 

Yass Valley Council’s general manager David Rowe concedes the site is a disappointment. Unfortunately, he says, there’s little council can do. 

“Nothing’s changed, which is disappointing from a community and council perspective,” he said yesterday morning. 

“If it gets to a point where it’s dangerous, council would step in. Otherwise, there’s nothing we can do.” 

The condition of the once thriving pub occupied dozens of hours in meeting time of the previous Yass Valley Council. 

Most agreed it was a blight on the town. 

“People thought, and I was one of them, ‘beauty, it’s changed hands,” ex-councillor Chris McKenzie McHarg told the Tribune in February of last year. His comments were published on the front page of the paper’s March 2, 2012 edition.

“It’s just sitting there and deteriorating… a lot of people are just over it,”

Former councillor Allan McGrath wasn’t the first, nor was he the last, to question the owners’ motives.

“I was starting to worry that it might’ve been just a long term investment,” Mr McGrath said at the time.

“We’ve had a continuous stream of comments since it closed and it’s been progressively deteriorating since then.” 

That was February 29, 2012. Little, it seems, has changed since.