The Grafton Hotel in the heart of Grafton in the hot Northern Rivers region has come to market for the first time in over four decades.
Enjoying a sizeable 748sqm block on main road Fitzroy Street, opposite Grafton Shopping World, the pub is a single bar operation, with commercial kitchen and bistro, gaming room with 15 gaming entitlements, function space and 13 pub-style accommodation rooms.
More than a million dollars has been spent in the past year, lifting the bistro, bar and function room, and putting in a new gaming room with full smoking solution. There is further scope to improve the gaming operation through improved rear-lane access (STCA) and signage, hardware upgrades and suitable promotion. The Hotel has improved #300 places in the Liquor & Gaming rankings in the past three years.
Weekly revenues are now circa $55k, with 27 per cent coming each from the bar and foodservice, and 41 per cent from gaming.
Vendors are the long-standing Dougherty family, who have owned it for 41 years. The family has also owned and operated Westlawn Insurance and Westlawn Finance for the past 50 years, and noting favourable market forces and other opportunities, put the Hotel up for sale.
“We have made a collective decision as a family to divest the asset,” said Jim Dougherty. “The Hotel has been wonderful to our family over the years, but ultimately it sits slightly outside of our core competencies of property investment, finance, insurance and accounting, and we believe now is the right time to sell.”
The northern NSW town is benefitting from investment in local infrastructure, such as the $700m Grafton supermax prison, generating over 600 jobs for the local economy, and the $240m Grafton Bridge, as well as the broader continued upgrades to the Pacific Highway.
Some significant sales have manifested in the Northern Rivers region, such as the North Coast Pub Group’s purchase of Grafton’s Good Intent Hotel for $5 million, and last week the Lennox Hotel to Stu Laundy and Fraser Short for $40 million.
HTL Property’s Xavier Plunkett and Blake Edwards have been engaged to market the family asset, with an accordant market response anticipated.
“We expect strong interest from both Sydney-based hoteliers as well as local syndicates due to highly favourable economic and lifestyle drivers presented by the asset,” says Plunkett.
“The Grafton economy has been the beneficiary of huge local infrastructure spending as well as a recent increase in both regional migration and domestic tourism.
“The Northern Rivers is currently one of the most favourable regional markets, and we look forward to rolling that momentum into a successful divestment outcome for our valued clients.”
The freehold going concern of the Grafton Hotel is being sold via Expressions of Interest, closing Wednesday, 31 March.
