Justin Hemmes snaps up Royal Hotel Bondi for $25 million
Justin Hemmes’ Merivale Group keeps getting bigger. Now it’s dropped $25 million for the Royal Hotel Bondi.
It’s turned Hemmes into the largest owner of popular Sydney pubs.
It’s his 10th pub acquisition in three years coming after him picking up The Alexandria Hotel ($10m), The Tennyson Hotel in Mascot ($37.5m), The Collaroy Hotel ($21m) and, the most recent one, the Vic On The Park in Marrickville which he bought from John Singleton’s Australian Pub Fund last month for $25 million.
All up, Merivale now operates 65 hospitality venues, all over Sydney.
These include the Ivy and the Establishment Bar in the Sydney CBD and the popular Coogee Pavilion in the eastern suburbs
It makes Merivale the leading pub group, ahead of restaurateurs such as celebrity chef Matt Moran's Solotel group and established pub owners such as the Laundy family.
And Hemmes has enough money – he has spent $70 million snapping up three major hotels over the past three months.
Hemmes purchased the Royal Hotel Bondi from the famous pub’s previous longtime owner Geoff Moulding.
Merivale isn’t saying too much but it’s confirmed it expects to receive the keys for the Bondi hotel next July.
And plans for the venue, it says, will be "announced in due course".
The pub on Bondi Road has quite a history. Established in 1904, it hosted the first meeting of the Bondi Lifesaving Club three years later. And for the past four decades, it has been run the Moulding family.
JLL national director John Musca, who also handled the Coogee Beach Palace, Hotel Bondi, Golden Sheaf Hotel, Royal Oak Double Bay and Clovelly Hotel transactions, managed the Royal Hotel’s sale.
Musca said the Royal was a special sale.
“I can't remember ever selling a hotel that attracted this level of interest, not surprising given Bondi's burgeoning global status, the area's gentrification and the hotel's manifest repositioning potential," Musca told the Sydney Morning Herald.
by Leon Gettler, November 9th 2017
