Demolition will begin on the former Maitland Park Bowling Club next week, after it was ravaged by fire earlier this year.
Maitland City Council made the decision to remove what is left of the Elgin Street site after a public appeal from the community, key stakeholders and commercial operators, failed to offer support for potentail adaptive reuse.
Independent assessments have confirmed the building sustained substantial damage during the incident and will need to be demolished due to safety concerns.
Council’s manager building projects and services Todd Stanley said the next step was to ensure safety be highest priority.
“We have engaged contractors with the relevant expertise to commence the demolition works, ensuring they are highly qualified and experienced in this type of project,” he said.
“Demolition will take place across two stages, with work expected to wrap up by the end of November.”
Stage one will begin next week and involve the removal of asbestos within the building as well as the demolition of structurally unsafe parts of the site.
This is expected to take a fortnight to complete before the remaining demolition works begin.
Members of the community should continue avoiding the site while work takes place for safety purposes.
Maitland Park Bowling Club was constructed in the early 1900s.
It underwent an extension in the 1970s and continued to be leased as a bowling club for more than 120 years until it closed its doors in July 2022.
It remained one of the oldest bowling clubs in the state before financial stresses were blamed for its closure.
It once housed almost 1,000 square metres of floor space across two floors.
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