Surry Hills’ Paramount Pictures to become boutique hotel
Sydney’s inner city Surry Hills might be home to restaurants, small bars and plenty of cafe culture but it is about to also sport a trendy new hotel, with a troika of entrepreneurial property developers, investors and coffee gurus transforming the former Paramount Pictures building into a 29-room boutique hotel and restaurant.
Slated to open in early 2018, the hotel, designed by Melbourne architects Breathe and to be known as the Paramount House Hotel, is expected to appeal to corporate travellers as well as holiday-makers with entry-level rooms to cost $200 to $300 a night.
“It’s the first new boutique hotel developed in Surry Hills in decades. We are aiming to please everyone really — we will be able to offer amenities for both leisure and corporate travellers,” says Russell Beard of Reuben Hills cafe, one of the entrepreneurs behind the new hotel who will also be involved in running it.
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Beard and Mark Dundon of Melbourne’s Seven Seeds Speciality Coffee Roaster in Carlton control 15 per cent each of the new hotel development, with the remaining 70% owned by property investor Ping Jin Ng of Paramount House. The partners have worked together for the past five years.
“We have the Paramount Coffee Project in Sydney and one in Los Angeles,” Beard says.
The total cost of the Paramount House Hotel in Commonwealth St is still to be finalised.
The original building was acquired for $5.01 million in 2013 in a deal negotiated by Michael Khoury, who is now with CBRE.
The hotel straddles two newly connected buildings, with the hotel entrance and lobby in the heritage Paramount House building and the restaurant and guest rooms at 76 Commonwealth Street, the former film storage warehouse for Paramount Studios. That building has had a two-level copper-clad extension fitted to the roof as part of the design.
The hotel’s 29 rooms mix heritage details with contemporary updates in a using a palette of concrete, terrazzo and timber.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
