The Italo Australian Club in Forrest has moved to shore up its future by applying for the removal of the concessional status of its lease so it would be clear to redevelop the land.
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The club has faced financial difficulties in the past and has decided to take action to prevent the threat of closure, a future looming for other small clubs in the ACT.
While the club has no plans to make any changes to the current operations at the site, its longer-term vision is to redevelop the land into a vibrant Italian precinct with a new integrated club and community centre.
In its 50th year of operation, the Italo Club has lodged a development application along with the Council of Italo-Australian Organisations to remove the concessional status of the existing Crown leases on two blocks in Forrest.
Italo Club board president Claudio Ciuffetelli said the way small clubs operated in the past was no longer relevant and if the club wanted to survive it had to move away from its reliance on poker machine revenue.
"We need to change because otherwise we will just wither and die," he said.
"It's got to the point now that we adjust or we lose our heritage."
Mr Ciuffetelli said things had been tight financially for years and would only get worse - the move to remove the concessional lease was just a small step in the right direction for the club.
The Italo Club at its peak had 7000 members but these days it has fallen to about 3000.
Documents lodged with the application say the club has never recovered from the cost of major extensions in the 1980s.
However in the past 15 years it had succumbed to a "triad of pressures" that had placed the club in further financial difficulty.
These included ACT government policies - smoking regulations, higher poker machine taxes, a changing demographic profile of club users, loss of relevance to the community, and "unfocused management".
"The club and CIAO both need to reposition their assets, activities and relevance to the needs of their members as well as to other communities of Canberra, in order to remain viable," the club say.
"By removing the concessional status of the two Crown leases it is anticipated that the economic benefits to the club and CIAO will be an improvement to the opportunities and flexibility for the future use and development of their land."
Mr Ciuffetelli said the plans for the sustainable Italian precinct had been in the pipeline for about three years.
He said decisions would be made about what would be built.
The Italo Club was one of nine small clubs in 2012 to receive an ACT government grant of $15,000 to investigate the redevelopment of their land to establish alternative revenue streams to poker machines.
Clubs ACT chief executive Jeff House said clubs were under a lot of pressure to diversify revenue and those that didn't would face eventual closure as costs continued to increase.
He said legislation changes and slow economic conditions in the ACT were having an impact on the city's clubs.
"Certainly small clubs, as with the rest of the industry, are struggling and experiencing reductions in revenue that are unprecedented," Mr House said.
The Italo Club will join a number of other clubs in Canberra that have applied to the ACT government to have the concessional status of the lease removed, including the Hellenic Club and the Canberra Raiders Braddon Club.
