You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
When it comes to buying pubs, Justin Hemmes is never still. The billionaire hotelier has just pocketed another pub, the popular Sackville hotel in Rozelle. He’ll add the fresh $50 million purchase to another he made just two months ago when he turned up at the auction of the Barracks and dropped a cool $19 million.
For Hemmes and his Merivale group, it’s always a good time to buy pubs. The Sackville (or Sacky-Roos as it was recently dubbed during the World Cup series) was offloaded by private owned Amalgamated Hotels group, which had owned the pub for about two decades.
Amalgamated was founded by Bruce Solomon whose pub management business Solotel operates the venue. A former personal secretary of the late Lady Mary Fairfax, Lee Thomas, is also a director of Amalgamated Hotels.
Unlike the purchase of The Barracks, a former RSL club, where Hemmes turned up in person to outbid three others at auction, the Sackville deal was done behind closed doors.
The pub’s sale, in the heart of Rozelle at 599 Darling Street, will need merger clearance from competition watchdog, the ACCC. Hemmes already owns another venue in the same suburb called Totti’s Rozelle, which once known as the Three Weeds – a reference to a rose, shamrock and thistle.
The deal adds yet another venue to Merivale’s extensive 80-plus empire that it owns and manages across Sydney, regional NSW and Victoria.
Offloading the Sackville is part of a larger sale by Amalgamated which includes The Clock and The Bank. JLL Hotels and Hospitality Group’s John Musca, Ben McDonald and Kate MacDonald handled the transaction.
A Merrylands building that launched Australia’s original discount chemist is going to auction for the first time in 74 years, ending a remarkable era of single-family ownership.
The two-building property at 185-189 Merrylands Road is home to the original Cincotta Discount Chemist, which first opened its doors in 1952.
The site is fully leased to the Cincotta Group and an optometrist through to 2033, with the property returning $353,184 in net annual income. That gives it a price expectation of about $6 million.
Joseph Cincotta, whose family has held the land since 1952, said the property holds an iconic place in Australian retail history. His pioneer store paved the way for modern after-hours and discount pharmacy trading in Australia and now serves as the flagship location for the Cincotta group, which spans more than 50 locations nationwide.
The building sits on 797 square metres of land with a commercial centre zoning and has dual street frontages with rear lane access to Main Lane. It’s covered by a 77-metre height limit.
RWC Western Sydney agents Peter Vines, Joseph Assaf and Victor Sheu are advising on the sale.
Sonnel Hospitality has got a green light to undertake about $15 million in redevelopment work at the Ashfield Hotel and Hurstville Ritz Hotel in Sydney’s inner-west.