Veteran corporate hotelier Steve Savic has teamed up with the players behind IMG Hotels to purchase the tired Mittagong Hotel in the NSW southern highlands, with big plans.
Built in the last few years of the 1800s, the three-storey Mittagong pub was originally known as the Exchange Hotel. It occupies a sizeable 1,461sqm lot, providing public bar, commercial kitchen, bistro and lounge seating, gaming room with nine PMEs, freestanding cottage, and a cocktail bar servicing a picturesque beer garden, centred around a tulip tree.
Upstairs there are 14 guest rooms, which have been idle for two years, plus a two-bedroom manager’s residence.
Savic is a Shellharbour local and worked at international hotel company Accor for 25 years, becoming GM. He has formed a collaboration with Andrew Turnbull and Matthew Clowry, of investor-backed group IMG Hotels, which purchased the entire MPK portfolio in early 2021.
Savic will be licensee at the Mittagong, driving the planned repositioning.
“It’s about delivering tourist product and doing some tourist stuff, rather than just straight beer and pokies,” he says. “That’s where my involvement comes in.”
The new owners have already begun a full top-to-bottom renovation, planning to activate functions and bring attractions such as a possible brewery. There will be new kitchens, with a custom-built pizza oven, bars, gaming lounge and TAB space.
Half of the hotel rooms have ensuites, and will be appointed to a standard befitting the highlands, in a region crying out for more accommodation.
Overall the offering will be “unashamedly feminine” and pitched toward patrons interested in a higher average spend.
“We want to lift the spec from being your average local pub,” explains Savic. “We want to elevate that standard and really draw on the top end locals that live in the area, as well as the Sydney people that travel to the southern highlands on weekends. It’s very much going to be a tourist-fronted offering.”
Located around 115 kilometres southwest of Sydney, Mittagong is considered the gateway to the southern highlands, yet probably the last town in the highlands to reinvent itself.
It is a 10-minute drive from Berrima, and the likes of Bendooley Estate and Centennial Vineyards, and Savic is planning to target patrons such as hen’s nights, ladies’ groups and winery tours coming out of Sydney.
Despite being bastardised over the decades, the pub has retained a lot of original features, seen in big cornices and grand hallways, where the team found stunning timber floors under layers of carpet and glue. The building holds a heritage overlay on the façade, and they are investigating the potential of some manner of heritage grant to further the restoration.
“I’ve been approached by some locals that over the years salvaged a lot of the heritage features off the façade of the hotel, like the cast iron posts and lacework. They’ve offered it to me if I promise to reinstate the front of the hotel.”
Savic also holds the keys at the Robertson public house, in Wollongong, which is doing a roaring trade in functions and weddings.
He bought the Mittagong from Angela Dalton and Tom Burns, who had owned it for nearly a decade, for an amount not disclosed.
If more suitably tourism-oriented opportunities can be found, he says this won’t be their last.
“So long as we can find hotels that align with what we want to deliver, then we’re definitely acquisitive,” replies Savic. “It’s just a different dimension to the normal stock-as-a-rock schnitzel and pokies offering.”
The off-market sale was managed by Manenti Quinlan & Associates’ Leonard Bongiovanni, who says the area bodes well for innovative hoteliers.
“Interest in the southern highlands is at an all-time high, creating the opportunity for hoteliers to capitalise on the growing popularity.”
