Seven-year boom for Waterloo pub

Waterloo pub the Grosvenor Hotel has sold for more than $5 million.
Waterloo pub the Grosvenor Hotel has sold for more than $5 million.

A company backed by businessman Warwick Negus has offloaded The Grosvenor Hotel in the inner Sydney suburb of Waterloo to a Chinese group for about $5 million.

Negus, previously chief executive of Colonial First State Global Asset Management and co-founder of 452 Capital, as well as holding senior roles at Goldman Sachs, has sold with Sydney pub values booming.

Negus and friend Denis Hickey bought the hotel for $2.35 million from the Riversdale Group in 2010.

Blake Edwards of Ray White Hotels brokered the sale of the hotel at 153 Phillip St via private treaty.

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The hotel sits on a 303sqm of prime commercial real estate on the corner of Morehead and Phillip streets in Waterloo, one of Sydney’s most densely populated and rapidly gentrifying areas.

The hotel is adjacent to the Waterloo Public Housing redevelopment, one of the largest urban renewal projects earmarked for Sydney for the next 20 years.

The Chinese group plans to take on the management of the freehold going concern hotel, which has a public bar, kitchen, bistro, TAB, Keno, gaming room with 12 gaming machines, and eight pub-style accommodation rooms. The pub could have long term redevelopment potential.

Some of Sydney’s most experienced hoteliers have also bought into the area.

Pub tsar Justin Hemmes recently bought the nearby Alexandria Hotel for $10m, Bruce Solomon picked up the Erskineville Hotel and Martin Short’s acquired the Tudor Hall Hotel in Redfern.

This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.