Combined interests are offering up Solotel’s Kingsford landmark the Regent Hotel and surrounding property, representing a freehold operation and accompanying major development opportunity.
The sale is led by offer of the family-run group’s multifaceted Regent Hotel, providing a lively sports bar, bistro, gaming room with 30 machines and an outdoor courtyard, with 6am late-trading Friday and Saturday. It hosts regular events, including its “famous Karaoke night” on Thursdays, and reports weekly revenue of around $145k.
The freehold of the Regent has been held by Amalgamated Hotels since 1999, and in the subsequent 27 years it has added surrounding properties to its collection. The company also owns the freeholds of Solotel’s Bank Hotel Newtown, The Clock Hotel in Surry Hills and the Sackville Hotel Rozelle.
It is now divesting the 2,684sqm corner block in Kingsford, marking the first time to market in over 25 years.
Kingsford and Kensington are central to one of Sydney’s “most dynamic urban renewal corridor[s]” and are seeing increasing demand for student accommodation and higher-density residential.
Prominent in the centre of development activity, around 50m from Kingsford Light Rail Station, the Regent site is within a major urban renewal corridor and proximate to anchor facilities such as UNSW, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick Racecourse and Moore Park.
Importantly, it has favourable designated planning controls, zoned E2 Commercial Centre, with 5:1 FSR, 60m height limit and potential GFA of nearly 17,500sqm, or 400+ beds, depending on layout (STCA).
Amalgamated Hotels is understood to represent the hospitality interests of the Fairfax publishing family. Its directors include Solotel founder Bruce Solomon, and Lee Thomas, a long-time associate of Mary Fairfax.
Solotel has been reconfiguring its collection this year, recently selling its leases on four Sydney pubs to AVC for circa $60 million, and this month listing the FGC of its Bridgeview Hotel in Willoughby.
The Regent Hotel and development properties are available individually or in-one-line, through an Expressions of Interest campaign closing Thursday, 2 April, with price guidance north of $100 million.
A divestment campaign is being managed by JLL Hotels’ John Musca and Ben McDonald in conjunction with Colliers’ Guillaume Volz. JLL speak of eager underbidder capital after the recent sale campaigns on the Silverwater Hotel, sold to the Marlow Group for around $75 million, and Richard’s on the Park, sold to Lewis Hotels for around $64 million.
The popular pub is expected to attract interest from publicans and hotel groups, particularly due to its location, enjoying the assurance of limited immediate competition and high barriers to entry, as well as further potential in its trading profile.
“Hotel businesses rarely enjoy catchment attributes as compelling as the Regent,” suggests Musca.
“The combination of scale, licence conditions and location creates genuine scope for ongoing operational upside.”
Volz adds that the potential development of the broader site is “increasingly difficult to replicate” in Sydney growth corridors.
