Fearing its closure and redevelopment, devotees have launched a crowdfunding campaign to enable purchase of Collingwood’s prized and for sale Tote Hotel.
Since the 1980s The Tote has been one of Melbourne’s best-known live music venues, but after more than a decade and ‘nothing left in the tank’ its proprietors listed the pub this month, with price expectations of $6-6.6 million.
Built 1870, as the Ivanhoe Hotel, it was renamed The Tote in 1981, hosting Australian and international live music acts. In 2010 a change to licensing laws forced licensee Bruce Milne to close, but later that year the team of Sam Crupi, Jon Perring and Andy Portokallis stepped up to take over the operation. A year later they purchased the freehold for $1 million from Chris Morris’ Colonial Leisure Group.
Rocking on throughout the increasing challenges to pubs with live music, one of the partners, Andy, was lost to cancer soon before COVID, then Victoria’s extended lockdown periods forced Sam and Jon join other operators in GoFundMe campaigns to stay in business.
Hearing news of the sale of The Tote, the rock manics behind North Melbourne’s Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar have been working on a deal to preserve the brother in beats venue, again looking to the finances of fans.
The Last Chance Rock & Roll Bar is a small, late night, punk-rock-hole-in-the-wall, 185-pax live music venue in Melbourne’s CBD, run by “partners in love, life & business, Shane & Leanne”, who took over the struggling pub early 2016 and have turned it into one of the city’s most beloved live music venues.
Shane and Leanne are calling upon their network of music-lovers to match the $3 million they can raise through banks and private investors, and late last week launched a crowdfunding campaign on Pozible that has so far raised $134,405.
They note the roughly $6 million asking price is a “fair chunk of change” that is beyond their capabilities, believing it will close after it sells and “some asshole developer is going to get it. Unless someone does something”.
The freehold going concern is being actively marketed, and the vendors have tipped they will be looking ‘favourably’ at proposals incorporating a live music component.
Last Chance To Save The Tote – Pozible
