Harold Park Hotel sold within five days
Sydney’s pub market is continuing its golden run with Oscars Hotels snapping up the Harold Park Hotel in inner city Forest Lodge for about $6 million, capping a week in which about $60 million worth of pubs changed hands.
The shuttered Harold Park Hotel was sold by its freehold owner after receivers were called in on the leaseholder, but Oscars intends to reopen the property, which will become part of its network across Sydney.
The pub was sold by JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group five days after coming to market although Oscars had been eyeing off the property due to its location opposite a new Mirvac development.
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The pub is opposite what used to be Harold Park Raceway and will benefit from the Mirvac project that has about 1300 apartments. The hotel is about a decade old and sports a public bar and bistro, beer garden, first-floor bar and function room, and a smoking gaming room.
JLL senior vice-president Nick Butler managed the sale with national director John Musca and they say it was keenly contested.
The sale comes hot on the heels of deals for the nearby Empire Hotel, Annandale for $10.3m, also to Oscars, and former Wallaby Bill Young acquiring the Friend in Hand Hotel in Glebe off-market for more than $10m.
Pub mogul Arthur Laundy also picked up an entire city block in Sydney’s suburban Drummoyne, with the centrepiece the popular hotel, in a $42 million deal brokered by HTL managing director Andrew Jolliffe, whose firm also handled the Friend in Hand Hotel.
Four major pubs have sold this year in NSW including The Steyne at Manly for $62.5m, The Cambridge at Fairfield for $55m and the Lidcombe Hotel, picked up by the low-profile pub-owning Walker family for $54m.
JLL research shows nearly $500 million worth of hotel sales nationally in the first half. Musca says JLL has exchanged seven hotel transactions in the past few weeks ranging from $4-$6 million and more deals are underway.
HTL’s Mr Jolliffe says the hospitality property market is set for another strong period.
“The confluence of record multi-department revenue attraction, legislative calm and the comparatively favourable economics of funding have rarely, if ever, been so symbiotic,’’ he says.
He adds that the Mathieson family’s “redefined” involvement in the ALH portfolio, as part of Woolworths planned spin-off of its liquor operations, is a “lightning rod” for the national pub landscape.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
