Tighes Hill's Cross Keys Hotel will reopen after a $1.3 million refurbishment under plans lodged with City of Newcastle.
The owner of award-winning East End pub The Grain Store, Corey Crooks, plans to renovate the art deco building and reinstate its external doors and windows.
The Cross Keys dates back to 1883 and the existing building to the 1920s. The pub closed in the 1980s.
The name Cross Keys is a biblical reference to the keys of heaven, or keys of St Peter, which are featured on the papal emblem used by the Catholic church.
Mr Crooks' plans for the hotel include refurbishing the ground floor as a bar and restaurant.
The pub would open to midnight Monday to Saturday and 10pm on Sundays.
The development application says it will not have poker machines.
Mr Crooks said he and wife Kristy were excited to return the building to its original purpose as a hotel and help grow commercial activity on Maitland Road.
"We have been residents in Tighes Hill and Maryville for 18 years and are well entwined in the local community," he said.
"We hope the revitalisation of The Cross Keys helps to reinstate a neighbourhood hub on the Maitland Road strip of Tighes Hill that has previously housed various shopfronts in years past.
"Locals have been fortunate to have had some fantastic new businesses such as Praise Joe, Apple a Day, Unravel Studio & Bar Solè entrench themselves into the fabric of Tighes Hill in recent years, and we look forward to adding our own contribution and culture into our community in the future."
He said the hotel would help improve safety and amenity in an area now inactive after dark.
"Contrary to some speculation, we are not moving The Grain Store to Tighes Hill," he said.
"It will remain operating in its existing location."
The Cross Keys would not "stray too far away from the ethics on how we have set up and operated The Grain Store these past 10 years".
"We have worked closely with local architects CKDS in bringing the original soul back to this high-exposure site."
