One of Glebe’s historic watering holes has a new Friend – for the third time in six years, as Ray Reilly and co take on the inner west pub, following a public sale by Marcello Colosimo’s Momento Hospitality.
In 2022 Momento undertook a rapid expansion of its inner west footprint, buying the Friend from Wallaby publican Bill Young, who had himself bought it in 2019 in a return to the family, with his father having previously owned and operated it in the 80s and 90s.
But Momento also went on to rapidly acquire the Royal Albert Hotel in Surry Hills and the Nags Head Hotel in Forest Lodge.
Colosimo’s group maintains a strong impetus on expansion in its north-west heartland, where it already owns and operates a stable of large-format hotels, including the new Silverwater Hotel, and very recently opened and widely anticipated Oran Park Hotel.
The Friend had been deemed a ‘non-strategic’ asset and was listed earlier this year.
The group has recently repositioned the nearby Nags Head Hotel, adopting for an English ‘gastro’ pub theme.
And Momento is also understood to have very recently divested another of its other inner-city freeholds, Surry Hills’ Royal Albert, sold to the Harvey family’s Brickfield Hospitality for a price believed to be around $5 million.
The Friend is now sans-gaming, and with a midnight liquor licence and early opener flexibility, and proximate to Broadway Shopping Centre and Sydney fish markets and more than 200 new apartments and several other large-scale housing developments, the Friend is well suited to a food & beverage operator and stands to benefit from local growth.
Agents were tight-lipped on the sale price except to say it was in line with market guidance, thought to be circa $6 million.
Ray Reilly’s Riley Group holds a growing stable of hotels in the vicinity, including the Sydney Park in Newtown, Henson Park in Marrickville, White Cockatoo in Petersham, and both the London and Cricketers Arms hotels in Balmain.
“We’re absolutely delighted with our acquisition of the Friend in Hand Hotel,” says Reilly.
“We’ve admired this hotel from afar over the years and just haven’t been in a position to acquire it the last couple of times it has become available.
“Our plans are to talk with the locals, listen to exactly what they want and then immediately execute an extensive renovation and refurbishment in line with what the local community want,” he explained.
Taking the keys this week, the pub will be extensively renovated and refurbished over the next few months, which has prompted a question of grave community concern, being what will become of Georgie, the cockatoo that has famously resided at the bar for the past 16 years.
While many were worried about the Friend’s mascot’s ability to tolerate relocation, and as rumours swirled the new owner was not counting on a cockatoo, Reilly has now confirmed that the feathered friend will be temporarily relocated to the aptly named White Cockatoo Hotel in Petersham during the renovation process.
The sale was managed by HTL Property’s Sam Handy, Blake Edwards and Andrew Jolliffe, who declined to comment.
