First look inside new neighbouring Fortitude Music Hall Venue

A Brisbane hospitality giant facing questions over its financial future is set to unveil a bar big enough for more than 700 people, with food and live music on offer — and one notable centrepiece.

MANTLE Group Hospitality is set to unveil its latest high-profile Brisbane venue, despite questions over the company’s financial future.

The Sound Garden – a whopping 770-capacity bar, wood-fired eatery and live music venue sitting alongside the much-hyped The Fortitude Music Hall – is due to open within weeks in Brunswick Street Mall, Fortitude Valley.

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First look inside the new Sound Garden bar, eatery and live music venue next to Fortitude Music Hall, Fortitude Valley. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The multi-level site boasts a lavish, industrial-luxe fit-out with two bars – one fronted with brass, the other limestone – marble table tops, booth seating, recycled hardwood floors and a 7m Ficus Hillii tree as its centrepiece.

A stage downstairs will host live bands nightly, while a spacious balcony will look over the mall below.

Venue manager Davor Djuric said the Hogg & Lamb-designed building was the perfect size for continuing the rejuvenation of the live music scene in the Valley

“You want to go big. You want to make noise,” he said.

“The last six or seven years, there’s been less and less of those big night clubs in The Valley; it’s actually turning to that live music rather than the big DJs and the big raves. I think this is probably the start. I think it won’t be long before we’re up there with Melbourne and Sydney.”

While the venue has been 18-months in the making, a spokeswoman from Mantle Group, behind other Queensland hospitality venues including The Charming Squire, Pig ‘N’ Whistle pubs, and Jimmy’s on the Mall, said there was nothing untoward behind the delays.

Venue manager Davor Djuric in one of the booths at the new Sound Garden venue. Picture: Steve Pohlner

“We’ve had just a lot of projects,” she said.

“We opened two major venues in Sydney this year and we’ve only got a certain amount of … human resources so we just had to allocate where we could.”

Despite Mantle Group’s latest annual report revealing funding issues and a drop in profits from $2.9 million to a $563,000 net loss in 2017-18, the spokeswoman said it was business as usual for the company.

“Everything is still going ahead. There’s no change,” she said.

That includes another spin-off of South Brisbane’s The Charming Squire, The Lucky Squire at Broadbeach, which aims to kick off either in March or April.

The Sound Garden signage. Picture: Steve Pohlner/AAP