Wallaby publican Bill Young has scored again, beating off competition to take the prominent Bar Broadway in Chippendale for a reported circa $36 million.
The re-stapled freehold going concern, first known as the Westminster Hotel, then the Guys & Dolls Hotel, Sutherlands Hotel and most recently Bar Broadway, came to market in May for the first time in nearly 20 years.
The long-term vendors of the freehold and business were both said to be exiting the industry to “retire and pursue other commercial interests”, looking to a possible sale price in a hot market in the vicinity of $45 million.
It has been bought by Rugby legend turned hotelier Bill Young, who sold his Friend in Hand Hotel in Glebe to Marcelo Colosimo the same month Bar Broadway hit the news.
In 2020 he bought and last year renovated the Illinois Hotel in Five Dock, and early 2021 bought the Royal Hotel in Ryde from Pat Gallagher.
The Bar Broadway premise has a long association with Tooth and Co, and is one of only a few surviving examples of Sydney CBD hotels built in an interwar Functionalist style. It holds a 24-hour hotel licence, gaming operation with 28 machines, and upstairs accommodation set up for 36 beds, plus activated DA for two additional upper floors.
Central to its growing commercial, retail, student and residential catchment it is said to be one of the most strategically located hotels in Sydney – finding itself at the core of the huge southern CBD Central Park development, Chinatown, multiple universities and only metres from Central Station, plus Sydney’s ‘Silicon Valley’, bringing three new towers by Atlassian, Frasers and Dexus next door, set to deliver circa 4,000 construction workers for up to five years ahead of 16,000 additional permanent employees.
The deal was negotiated by JLL Hotels John Musca and Ben McDonald, in conjunction with Knight Frank’s Mike Wheatley, who report an intensely competitive sale campaign – driven by its “unparalleled location”.
Bill Young declined to comment on plans prior to publication.
