One of Melbourne’s most beloved pubs has been sold in an off-market transaction.
The leasehold interest of the Grosvenor Hotel has been sold by long-time owners, the Catalfamo family, with JLL Hotels & Hospitality’s Will Connolly running the discreet sale campaign. The leasehold was acquired by a Melbourne-based hospitality group.
The well-patronised corner pub features a large public bar and sports bar with an outdoor alfresco area, a gaming room with 22 EGMs, a newly constructed outdoor smoking room, a large dining room with additional private function space, a first floor function room, and a drive-through bottle shop and gourmet grocer.
Grosvenor Hotel has an established reputation as a pub that turns out an excellent food offer – with the drive-through bottleshop once also housing the St Kilda Burger Bar – but the new operators are said to be repositioning the pub as a premier gaming venue within the area.
“It was a genuine pleasure to facilitate a transaction between two parties that not only had a mutual respect for each other, but most importantly a mutual respect for the property,” stated Connolly.
“The Grosvenor Hotel provides any operator a huge variety of income streams, whether this be their already fantastic food reputation or it’s consistent gaming income [which] the successful purchaser quickly identified when introduced to the opportunity.”
The Grosvenor Hotel is the second well-known pub to transact in the last couple of months, with the outgoing Hart family selling the freehold of the Emerald Hotel in South Melbourne to Gerald Delany for $6 million.
Connolly suggests this is just the beginning for pub sales activity for the year.
“We see 2021 being a market in which some owners may [look] to transact quietly, so we’ve set a particular focus in connecting buyers and sellers together discreetly in a transaction, with the sale of The Grosvenor being an example of this. 2021 will certainly be a year of activity in our market, however some deals will need to be grown organically.”