Long-time owner and designated pub matriarch of Lambton, Nancy Duggan, has sold her precious Northumberland Hotel to veteran hotelier Tom Adams as she plans retirement and her next projects.
The two-storey brick Northumberland Hotel resides on a sizeable 727sqm corner block with dual street frontage, in the park side Newcastle suburb of Lambton.
It incorporates an efficient single service bar, Thai restaurant, gaming room, beer garden, and two self-contained units upstairs.
Nancy bought the pub with her (late) husband in July 2003 – just a month before he passed away, in August.
She had previously run restaurants and coffee shops, but while finding herself at the sharp end of a battle, soon came to see the pub as “just selling a different product”.
This was aided by the fact her trial by fire was being tempered by some sympathetic locals.
“I had fantastic patrons here that looked after me like silk, and this was their home,” says Nancy.
“I didn’t need any security, they looked after me.”
The new publican’s journey even included ‘L plates’, which were in time upgraded to ‘P plates’.
“They put them around my neck,” she recalls, “And they would come to the bar and say ‘We want the learner to pour our beer’ and tell me how … they’d say a middy is in two pours, a schooner is in three.”
Proving wrong plenty of naysayers, the learner licensee steered the ship for the next two decades.
Around three years’ ago, Nancy married long-time partner Robert Fernance, who holds the title to Customs House, under lease, and previously owned Newcastle’s Cricketer’s Arms.
Industry sources say The Northo has now sold for around $9 million to Tom Adams, who previously owned and operated the Woolpack Hotel in Mudgee.
The pub at the literal and figurative heart of Lambton exhibits all the favourable underlying investment fundamentals, including mixed-use development potential courtesy of its B2 zoning.
Its sale continues recent Newcastle hotel sales, such as that of the Caves Beach Hotel to Oscar’s in April, the Beach Hotel in Merewether to Glenn Piper in early May, followed by the Kearney family’s Beauford Hotel to Nick Clark.
HTL Property’s Blake Edwards and Dan Dragicevich, who managed Duggan’s divestment of the Northumberland, say the activity demonstrates the high level of interest in Newcastle hotels, and that at least two more transactions are in “concluding stages”.
“We have seen a surge in interest in Newcastle Hotel opportunities in recent times as the city continues to undergo its renaissance – spearheaded by Iris Capital’s East End precinct, amongst a myriad of other private development and infrastructure projects,” reports Dragicevich.
Lambton’s first lady says they will now “sit down and think” about what comes next, beyond the likely continuation of their property development interests, and looks back fondly on her years behind the bar.
“My daughter, Louise Duggan, helped. It was just the two of us; we did it together.
“My patrons have been my other family. There’s still a lot of them who still drink here today – they supported me all the way.”
