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If being locked in a strange room at the back of a Wollongong laneway with a bunch of friends (or coworkers!) until you solve series of complex puzzles sounds like your idea of fun, the city’s latest bar proposal might be right up your alley. A quirky new bar planned for a historic building backing on to Crown Lane will bring a new global entertainment craze – the escape room – to town. Planned for the middle floor of Howarths Excelsior Hall – which houses Cash Converters and Italian restaurant Kneading Ruby – the venue would include a bar, private karaoke rooms and five themed “escape rooms”. Escape rooms have been popping up in Melbourne and Sydney in the past year or so but have been popular overseas for some time. Like a real life puzzle or adventure game, they present players with a series of challenges which must be solved within the allocated time to unlock the door and escape the room. In their application to Wollongong council, Brett Baker and Colin Bloomfield have proposed including rooms themed around Medieval, Tutankhamen, Mad Scientist, Da Vinci and Saw. Alcohol would be sold for the escape room patrons, and food – made off premises – would also be available, the plans said. The venue would open from 10am – 10pm from Sunday to Wednesday, and until midnight from Thursday to Saturday. It would host a maximum of 150 patrons. The applicants say the bar will bring more people to the “Western Crown Street Precinct which has historically struggled as an attractive place”, and will enhance and restore the heritage facade of the old building. The plan for the escape room bar is on public exhibition until March 15 through the council’s website.

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