High performing western Sydney pub Richard’s on the Park has been sold by Vicki Webster and family to industry stalwart the late Phil Webster, in the biggest Sydney sale of 2025 to date.
The Webster family’s foray into pubs began with the purchase of the Union Hotel in Newtown in 1976.
In 1982 they went on to pay close to $1 million for Richard’s on the Park in Canley Vale, established in 1959 as the Kookaburra Hotel.
Over the coming decades the next generation of Websters, brother and sister Vicki and Phil, assumed operations at the large-format western Sydney pub, on a 4,389sqm site in the Fairfield LGA.
Central to the fast-growing Canley Vale retail precinct and mere metres from the train station, Richard’s offers a public bar with a state-leading TAB and gaming room, accommodation rooms on the upper floor, and plenty of onsite parking.
Equipped with the state limit of 30 machines, the gaming operation climbed in the Liquor & Gaming rankings from 104 to position 70 in the first half of 2025.
The pub had been in the family 40 years when in December 2022 Phil, a long serving AHA NSW executive, passed away aged just 62.
AHA NSW senior vice-president and long time friend Lyn Humphreys remembered his three loves in life, being “his pub, his boats and his AHA”.
Vicki and the family’s sale now represents their exit from the industry.
Taking the helm is John Lewis’ Lewis Hotels, for a reported $64 million, making it the highest value sale in Sydney so far this year.
A sale comes as activity and value levels approach double that of 2024, driven by pivotal transactions such as Redcape’s sale of the Beach Hotel Byron Bay to the Didier family for $140 million, in May.
Lewis Hotels already keeps an A-grade stable of NSW assets, including the Beverly Hills Hotel, Lalor Park Hotel, purchased in 2016, and Ramada Hotel in Lansvale, acquired in 2021 for close to $40 million.
An off-market transaction on the new Canley Vale venue was through JLL Hotels’ John Musca and Ben McDonald, who thank Vicki Webster and “congratulate the purchasers” on the strategic addition in a roaring market.
