The Crocodile Farm Hotel in Ashfield is the latest gaming-centric metro pub to market, being sold for the first time in its history.
The Crocodile is located in the heart of the Ashfield high street retail precinct at the main entrance to Ashfield Mall Shopping Centre and adjacent to one of Sydney’s busiest railway stations, seen by around 10 million passengers each year, in what is affectionately known as ‘Little Shanghai’, encompassing Asian restaurants, grocers and retail shops fronting Liverpool Road.
It has a two-level trading footprint with efficient single service point on each floor, ranging a public bar, gaming room with bar and 30 machines, and restaurant and bar on the first floor. The licence stipulates 24-hour trading approvals, including midnight trading on Sundays and 3-hour weekend shutdowns.
Average weekly revenue in excess of $164k is generated across bar, gaming and wagering only, as the restaurant, usually under lease, is currently not in operation.
Ashfield Mall enjoys more than 7.3 million visitors annually, and the pub benefits from the volume of customer traffic to the Woolworths, Coles, Aldi and Kmart anchor-tenanted complex.
“Robust assets with long histories of profit generation such as this one are as rare as they are keenly sought, and the hotel’s proximity to multiple patronage generators provides confidence regarding sustainable footfall,” advised HTL Property Managing Director, Andrew Jolliffe, managing the sale campaign in conjunction with JLL Hotels’ John Musca.
The Crocodile occupies a 396sqm site zoned B4 mixed-use, with 23-metre height limit and 3:1 FSR, providing future development potential, subject to council approvals.
The area is deemed ‘under-pubbed’ with only two in a large town centre servicing Ashfield, Croydon, Canterbury, Campsie and Burwood, and the Crocodile is well positioned to capitalise on Ashfield’s residential growth prospects, seen in nearly 700 apartments in the immediate development pipeline.
Ashfield precinct is part of Sydney’s lucrative ‘Golden Corridor’ and the pub was ranked #78 for the Jun-22 quarter by Liquor & Gaming. It has a history of being in the Top-50, and holds scope to reconfigure and improve its gaming and wagering, which generates 93 per cent of trade via 22 entitlements and eight permits on dated hardware.
Vendor on the sale is Jeff Williams, who has owned and operated it since a licence was moved to the site.
Sale of the pub follows a spate of metropolitan transactions, including Damien Kelly’s portfolio, Nelson Meers’ record purchase of the Crossroads, Kent Walker divesting the Earlwood, Iris acquiring the Strathfield Hotel, Bill Young buying Bar Broadway, and Pat Gallagher taking on the Longueville Hotel.
Multiple gaming-centric pubs have transacted in the last 12 months, at a reported average yield of around 5.2 per cent.
The freehold going concern of the Crocodile Hotel is for sale by Expressions of Interest, closing Wednesday, 26 October.
