Hakfoort Group is celebrating the new look of the historic Lord Stanley Hotel, boasting a significant extension as part of a $15 million makeover.
The Hakfoort family bought the 135-year-old pub in 2022, paying around $20 million for the title from HPI and operation from Australian Venue Co.
Located in east Brisbane, close to the city and its iconic Gabba Stadium, principal Albert Hakfoort says it’s a “great piece of dirt” that they wanted to optimise.
“As a publican, I wanted to make the best of it we could,” he says.
The group promptly shut the heritage site for an extensive refurbishment, removing many of the unwanted additions and working around heritage aspects, such as the red brick façade.
Hakfoort relays that the restoration of a structure that had been so modified over the decades uncovered some “pretty hairy things”, such as forgotten doorways and windows and what remained of a decommissioned exterior staircase, at times proving more of a challenge than anticipated.
“In the demolition process you uncover warts that had been covered up under previous refurbishments.”
The Group had previously executed restoration of the famous Redbrick in Woolloongabba, sold to Bruce Mathieson in 2022, and were conscious of public reactions to such established icons.
Plans called for the well-loved pub to be ‘stripped to the guts’ and rebuilt using existing features and with appreciation for its antiquity.
Approval for the works required collaboration with a heritage architect. While the input at times got “challenging” Hakfoort says they overcame a few heritage issues, and in the end were in sync with the consultant, with the results “not much different to what we would have done”.
The now complete project now features additions such as a sports bar with a 200-inch LED TV wall, and wall coatings in the function room on the top level were removed to expose original brickwork.
And the new beer garden – an intentional focus of the makeover, in part due to a lack of options in the area – is now home to two mature, recently installed trees and over 1,000 plants, which were purchased more than a year before being transplanted in, to give them time to grow.
Its size and shape required the beer garden be split into terraces, both benefitting patron views of the jumbo screen and reducing the area’s appearance as a sprawling beer hall. Lots of booth seating was installed, plus a new kids’ playground, in a dedicated area to shelter other patrons from the noise.
“The beer garden is better than what I’d hoped,” says Hakfoort. “You get the feeling of being enveloped in greenery, rather than bricks and concrete.”
There is also a second new deck, for tradies, off the public bar, surrounded by TVs playing sport.
The Lord reopened to the public this month, following a grand opening event. The new proprietors suggest people who previously knew the place would not recognise it now, although pains were taken to keep it respectful to its origins.
Rescuing a fallen hero that had not seen love in some time, Hakfoort says there is something about the character of an old hotel.
“They have an attachment to something historical,” he offers.
“It just needed something – anything – which would be well received by the locals, because the way it was just wasn’t functional.
“We built a structure that will take the pub forward another 20 years.”
