The notice means that the doors finally close on possibly the biggest turnover merchant (by item) in the antique and allied trade in Australia, just as street and regular antique fairs and markets diminish sharply in numbers, attendance and desirable objects.
A sum of around $9 million has been suggested as a possible sales figure with the owners' wish that the property remain a commercial development - rather than a mere extension of the Sydney inner city “dormitory” - putting possible pressure on the outcome.
One of the tenants, Sydney antique dealer Mr Alan Landis, says that he is hoping to persuade other tenants, who include half a dozen members of the Australian Antique and Art Dealers Association, to consider proposals for a possible re-grouping.
More dealers, however, would have been on the street anyhow, had not the Mitchell Road Antique Centre, which is quitting its current home in Alexandria following the sale of its premises, decided to give that troubled antique trade another go elsewhere.
Mr Neil Burley, the major shareholder in Anibou Pty. Ltd. along with lawyer Gordon Stewart, gave the news to a gathering of stall-holders at the centre on the evening of March 31.
He said in the combined announcement-letter that since 1995 when the present management took over it had invested more than $1 million in refurbishments and done all it could to improve the business.
“But, I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you that, “things ain’t what they used to be in the antique trade", he added.
“Despite our best efforts, costs beyond our control have gradually risen while the centre’s income has steadily fallen over the last few years to a point where the current return on capital is significantly less than would be achieved by letting the building as storage space.
“These hard facts have made us realise that we’ve done all we can and that it’s time for change. We’ve therefore decided to cease trading on 30th June this year and sell the building.
“We understand that this will be disappointing to many but assure you that our decision hasn’t been made quickly or easily. It has been taken with a great deal of thought and sadness as the centre has been a major part of most of our lives for a long time – in my case since 1974.
He told Australian Art Sales Digest and the Antiques Reporter that the renovators' market the industry enjoyed when the centre opened had substantially diminished as householders opened up their houses to the outside world and no longer had formal rooms.
Vintage clothing was one of the few parts of the market to have prospered with one of the original promoters of the centre, Ms Lorraine Forster still in that business with a shop in an arcade in Castlereagh Street, Sydney.
The voluble American Mr Charles E. Hirsch, who founded the business with the help of Ms Forster died last year. He brought her out to Australia to run the operation when it opened,
Ms Forster said this week that no one expected the centre to last.
The centre was launched with a big party in a building needing much attention and light on comforts and conveniences.
An occasional common complaint among stall holders in recent times at the hugging, sympathy exchanging evening after Monday's announcement was that the centre, in contrast to Mr Hirsch's marketing bravura, had not done much advertising or promotion in recent times.
“No amount of spending on public relations could have changed the trends in taste away from tradition antiques,” Mr Burley said when this was put to him..
About $1 million had been spent in the last few years, including solar panelling and air conditioning but the income remained unsatisfactory due to a shortage of tenants.
The general manager of the centre, Mr Don Knowles, pointed out that Internet buying had also encouraged the stay at home buyer while the difficulties of many local retailers were also well reported.
The opening in 1974 tapped into a big expansion of Australia's antique market as prices of terrace houses rose around Sydney and aspirational buyers put Victoriana into them to match the era they were built in.
Over the next 20 years large numbers of containers were imported fostering a professional and amateur (in the modern sense) dealing market in the decorative arts of the 19th and early 20th century.
Retired business people often took spaces as they looked to occupy themselves. The centres provided them ideal spaces to hawk their wares and pursue their interests without being in attendance much if any of the day.
Some customers soon discovered that merchandise like canterburys and davenports (as well as chiffoniers named because they were designed to put one's chiffons in) were functional in their day but did not look the part or satisfactorily fulfil other needs in these often smaller surroundings.
Nor did they satisfy people's growing modernist fantasies. The “Louis” look also attracted a declining market and reproductions were often far sturdier than the old fare. Full original sets of chairs became as rare as emu teeth and prime Australiana became equally as elusive.
So top dealers found it more attractive to capitalise on any property assets and to move into centres too.
Properties on Sydney's Queen Street, Woollahra and to a much lesser extent in Melbourne's Armadale High Street, became too valuable and expensive to maintain.
Minimalism triumphed at the expense of clutter. Decorators focussed on the “look” rather than the authenticity of a room's contents at the top of the market while Ikea took over much of the lower.
Otherwise known by its original title the South Dowling Street Antique Centre, times became fraught for the centre's operation in 1995 struggling to emerge from the recession which the great antique buyer Mr Paul Keating said “we had to have.”
The present owners decided not to renew the lease to the then leaseholders, Mr Hirsch, and the manager, Mr David Gibbs.
Some of the tenants moved to the Tim Goodman's Museum Antique Centre in Darlinghurst, so named because of its proximity to the Australian Museum.
The Dowling Street Antique Centre was fifty centimetres outside the property requirements for the Eastern Sydney Distributor which it was feared in one way or another (e.g. parking restrictions) would close the operation.
Charles E. Hirsch had been a salesman for Rolls-Royces and Bentleys immediately before his arrival in Australia in 1974 and had also been involved with an English Jeans company called the unfortunately named "South Sea Bubble".
Charles and Lorraine had been in London's Kings Road Antique Market and they thought that the time was right to establish the same sort of thing in Sydney.
Amazingly, while it did found it necessary to accommodate purveyors of recent reproductions and a lot of tat, it proved no South Seas bubble and many that came after it like the Woollahra Antiques Centre and the Museum Antique Centre, it enjoyed a long and healthy life.
It had dealers much respected in their fields such as antique fishing tackle, Coca-Cola collectibles, toys, Royal Doulton, antique silver (Ian Dicker comes especially to mind) and Art Deco among its tenants.
The closure notice follows close on the cessation of Andre Jaku's World of Antiques and Art - the prestige publication of the antique world in Australia.
