Hotelier businessman Jim Knox has completed his divestment from the New England area with sale of the Griff Hotel Motel and opportunity to a rising player in the region.
Known locally as ‘The Griff’ the hotel one of the first pubs in the Murrumbidgee irrigation area, built on the corner of Griffith’s Yambil and Kooyoo streets in 1925, before being demolished in 1973 and replaced with the current structure.
The hotel asset is a multi-faceted offering incorporating bar trade, gaming with six (Band 3) EGMs – leased to another operator, accommodation, retail liquor and development potential, on a prominent 4,377sqm site with triple street frontage and multiple access points, in the commercial core of the Griffith CBD.
In its existing configuration it provides approximately 2,389sqm of net lettable area, but central to the offering was a DA-approved plan for a mixed-use hospitality and liquor redevelopment.
The project outlines a pub with restaurant and large-format (1,135sqm) retail liquor outlet, as well as an additional 152sqm retail tenancy, while retaining the existing 12-room motel and well-appointed manager’s residence, with approximately 50 on-site parking spaces.
The site benefits from flexible Local Centre zoning, with no prescribed FSR or height limitations, which further boosts its long-term development prospects.
Griffith is a city of around 20k residents, roughly 600 kilometres west of Sydney, characterised by full employment, above-average household incomes, substantial traveller workforce and strong hotel patronage.
The Griff further benefits from regulatory constraints that limit more hotel and retail competition.
A title search shows the purchaser to be Golden Vault Hotels (GVH), which already owns other venues in the Riverina region, such as the Clubhouse and Royal hotels, in Yass.
GVH was also the buyer of Knox’s Area Hotel in 2024.
Sources close to The Griff deal say GVH paid $8.5 million for the new addition.
Armidale pub player Jim Knox bought The Griff in 2014, along with the Gem Hotel. In 2019 he went on to purchase the nearby Area Hotel.
He has been moving toward shifting his business interests back to his Northern Tablelands homebase, having now divested approximately $80 million worth of hotel and hospitality assets in Griffith, including the Area Hotel in 2024 for $30 million, and The Gem in 2025 for $50 million, to former Wallaby Bill Young.
Knox said last year the Griffith region has “been very good to us” in both hotels and the family’s agriculture and engineering-related enterprises, but it poses “geographical challenges” and in the medium term they plan to “consolidate our holdings closer to our head office, in the New England Region”.
This transaction represents the completion of Knox’s strategic sell-down in the Riverina region, managed by HTL Property’s Xavier Plunkett and Andrew Jolliffe, who also executed Knox’s other divestments and claim agency over sale of more than $250 million in hospitality transactions across the region.
“Griffith exhibits some of the strongest hotel fundamentals of any regional centre in New South Wales,” offers Plunkett.
“The transaction was successfully negotiated via a targeted off-market process prior to any formal public marketing campaign, resulting in an optimal outcome for our vendor.
“The incoming purchaser will benefit from a large landholding and a structurally protected licence position.”
