Cheers to a year: Stories at Yagan Square celebrates first birthday after operators Nokturnl’s $10m punt

When Stories opened on April 19, 2024, the operators had a very straightforward metric for gauging whether the multi-venue hospitality hub at Yagan Square was working or not. “Us not going broke,” said Ross Drennan, one half of Nokturnl with business partner and former junior cricket teammate Drew Flanagan. The pair pumped $10 million of their own money into reviving Yagan Square, giving the politicised slab between Wellington Street in the CBD and Northbridge’s Roe Street a second crack at success. Taxpayers chipped in around $8m via DevelopmentWA for the overall redevelopment, with $5.4m going to the hospitality offering. Today, four restaurants and nine bars with a combined internal capacity of 3354 make it Perth’s biggest pub. The rebuild was counterintuitive. Nokturnl doubled the space of a venue that was previously bereft of customers. But it seems that they have given people what they want, with between 10,000 and 15,000 patrons visiting Stories each week. Anecdotally, crime and antisocial behaviour, which was a blight on Yagan Square before the redevelopment, have plummeted in the year since the new venues opened. During a recent catch-up, the Nokturnl partners said they took a big risk, and it has paid off. “Last we spoke we were worried this place was going to send us broke,” Drennan admitted, “but it’s slowly paying off the build.” There were “nervous moments before it opened and at the start,” Flanagan added, “but it was a good punt”. The partners said Stories’ beer garden Front Yard and inside venue Pourhouse have worked but the upstairs Rooftop bar has “shot the lights out” with lines snaking out the door into Yagan Square on weekends. The four levels effectively operate as two pubs — “fancy venue, nice pub,” according to Drennan — with kids climbing all over Front Yard’s playground during the day and bigger kids running amok in Rooftop at night. “On a Saturday night, we almost couldn’t squeeze another dollar out of the place,” he laughed. “You can’t get complacent,” Flanagan noted, “you’ve got to stay on top of it.” Stories’ restaurants have been a mixed bag with Italian diner Alba struggling for foot traffic but earning solid reviews. Unlike the instant popularity of Nokturnl’s mod-Asian restaurants Lotus (at the Beaufort in Highgate) and Tonic + Ginger (at the Old Synagogue in Fremantle), Karla at Stories was slow out of the blocks has taken most of the months since opening in May 2024 to build momentum. It’s now ticking along nicely, with solid walk-in numbers. Mediterranean eatery Ugly Baby is usually booked out for its bottomless brunches on weekends, but its takeaway kebab shop was recently replaced by taco and tequila bar Pink Taco, which is already going gangbusters. After overcoming teething problems and bringing a large team of more than 250 staff up to speed across multiple venues, the Nokturnl lads now say weekday lunches are the biggest struggle. “The CBD has been hard in that regard,” Flanagan offers. “I really wish the mining companies would relax the rules for the CBD office staff,” Drennan suggested. “It’s a bit stupid having the same rules as people driving haul packs up north for CBD office staff. “You always hear about back in the day when mining companies were doing well, hospitality thrived in the city because people would go out for long lunches.” While it won’t be a panacea for all the city’s woes, the imminent opening of Edith Cowan University’s Perth campus with 10,000 students and, more importantly for Stories’ bottom line, 1500 staff will be a boon for neighbouring hospitality businesses. “The whole of Yagan Square will be new and shiny, it’s just going to have a different feel,” Drennan said. “We hope that does complete the city link for Northbridge and become the centre (of the city).” And Stories is ideally placed to cash in, assuring that — by any metric — Yagan Square 2.0 is a success. Stories is open for normal trading on Good Friday, while DevelopmentWA is running free community event Illuminate on April 26 to mark the first anniversary of the Yagan Square redevelopment.