Pub dynasty Arthur and Stuart Laundy have teamed up for the first time, to buy the Bayview Hotel in Woy Woy in a new record for the region.
The large-scale Bayview overlooks Brisbane Water, around an hour by car or train from Sydney. The Hotel has history as the original Central Coast flagship for Tooheys Brewery.
Following a recent major makeover, it offers patrons a sports bar with full TAB and Keno facilities and live sports, dining in the Brasserie, beer garden, Frankies rooftop bar, and quality pub-style accommodation rooms. It hosts regular entertainment and promotions, and the ferry pulls up to the front door, bringing and taking visitors to the waterways and beaches of Umina and Ettalong.
“After a number of decades of fond ownership with my partners, myself and my wife Kerry along with our family are delighted to hand the reins over to such experienced hoteliers,” offers vendor Gary Narvo.
“We all look forward to the Laundys taking the Hotel into the next chapter of its life.”
The pub kings paid a reported $38 million for the waterside beauty, reflecting a yield believed to be about eight per cent. The sale marks a new high water mark for the Central Coast, following Harvest’s acquisition earlier this month of the nearby Woy Woy Hotel.
“We are very respectful of Gary and his partners who have owned the hotel for 20 years, and look forward to actioning some key revenue levers we have identified,” says Stu Laundy.
Gary Narvo is grandson to rugby league legend and boxer Hermann Olaf Narvo, who played for Australia in the 1930s.
Stu says they are eager to continue what is already a strong South Sydney Rabbitohs theme at the pub, “but more about that in due course,” he says.
While the father and son Laundy already have business partnerships, this is their first pub together. The sale settles in December.
It joins the seven transactions to date this year for the Laundy clan, including Stu’s partnership with Fraser Short at the Lennox Hotel. Laundy Hotels have recently purchased the accommodation-based Rydges Hotel in Bankstown, and Redfern’s Woolpack Hotel, in July.
The Central Coast has been benefitting from the domestic tourism boon, and the price and sharp yield are more reflective of Sydney metro hotels, suggest HTL Property’s Dan Dragicevich and Andrew Jolliffe, who brokered the deal.
The transaction marks a trend increasingly “emblematic” of established hotel families divesting long-held institutional assets.
“We’ve been blessed with the engagement to sell some absolutely thumping Central Coast businesses over the years, but this hugely popular property is one deserving of the region’s top mantle in terms of price achieved,” says Dragicevich.
