A passive investor has put to market suburban stalwart the Oonoonba Hotel of Townsville, offering oodles of upside in the thriving community.
Established in 1963, the pub occupies an expansive 3,739sqm corner lot with double street frontage, six kilometres from the Townsville CBD and close to shopping centres, schools, and local residential developments Fairfield Waters and The Village Estate, bringing around 3,500 new builds.
The Hotel offers a public bar, family-friendly bistro, gaming with 28 machine authorities (Coastal), covered beer garden, eight motel rooms, around 60 onsite parking spaces and a dual-lane drive-through bottleshop.
It was renovated in 2010, incorporating a flexible layout with central bar that accommodates multiple areas of the Hotel.
There is clear upside potential in the gaming room, which lacks a full complement of modern games or handling facilities. In the most recent tender, Central Queensland entitlements were listed at around $130k each, but there have not been any available for the last few tenders, which will put upward pressure on the price of any that do become available.
Reconfiguration of the gaming room, to provide access directly from the carpark, would reportedly also enable the expansion of the bistro area.
The Queensland Hotel’s licence also provides for three detached bottleshops, but this capacity is not being used.
Oonoonba Hotel Motel’s private owner resides in Western Australia and has nothing to do with operations. It has been under management for more than a decade, the last seven through a Brisbane-based company.
The Hotel would suit a hands-on owner-operator or as a bolt-on expansion, and the current management company is willing to work with the incoming operator if required.
Located on the southern edge of Townsville, the permanent resident population of Oonoonba is around 7,400 people, with minimal competition in the large catchment.
Townsville is enjoying a robust economy, heralding new infrastructure such as the City Waterfront Priority Development Area (PDA), which will facilitate the North Queensland Stadium, mixed-use development in the CBD, pedestrian and cycle paths and a variety of public open spaces.
Comparable assets in large Queensland regional centres have been seeing sale prices reflecting circa 12 per cent yield.
Oonoonba is being marketed by HTL Property’s Glenn Price and Brent McCarthy, who note a business with reliable cashflow and “plenty of low-hanging fruit” in operations.
“The Hotel has operated under full management for over 10 years, with the owner interstate and having no day-to-day input into the business,” says Price.
“This provides plenty of potential for an incoming operator, such as in the gaming room, which would greatly benefit from the implementation of TITO (Ticket in Ticket Out) and CRT (Cash Redemption Terminals).”
The Oonoonba Hotel Motel is being sold via Expressions of Interest, closing Wednesday, 23 March.
