The final Italian restaurant in Leichhardt’s once-famed Italian Forum complex has been sold amid ongoing uncertainty about the future of the struggling precinct.

Gina di Francesco has owned and operated La Giara Italian restaurant in the forum’s piazza since 1999, with daughter Josephine joining in 2001. But after years of serving linguine chilli prawns, homemade gnocchi and stuffed mushrooms, the duo have sold the restaurant, blaming low foot traffic and the precinct’s poor reputation.

The restaurant is expected to reopen under new owners, but its sale marks a sad milestone in the history of one of the inner west’s most peculiar developments.

The Italian Forum was marketed in 1989 as a facility to “meet the cultural needs of the community and revitalise the economic and aesthetic viability of the Leichhardt Town Centre”.

It has failed to do so, instead becoming embroiled in an ongoing conflict between landowners about its core purpose and the declining state of its buildings.

Gina and her husband, Mario, bought the restaurant space off the plan in 1999 after running a deli in Strathfield for 17 years.

“Our market was families, we were a family restaurant,” Gina said. “It wasn’t targeted at young people. It was family-friendly, child-friendly. It was your authentic, local Italian … it was what you don’t get any more. It was truly old-fashioned.”

The family quickly developed a strong client base of repeat visitors, but foot traffic has worsened for years, particularly several years ago when seven shops in the forum, all owned by the same person, closed down and the shopfronts were left vacant.