Adam’s Tavern in Blacktown has sold for $25 million in what’s been described as the largest gaming-centric hotel transaction since the start of Sydney’s second lockdown in June.
The pub, which has a drive thru bottle-shop, public bar, bistro and gaming lounge with 30 GMEs, was established by Bob McGhee who has sold it after 30-years of ownership to hotelier Peter Walker.
McGhee said, “I wish new owner Peter Walker, a long-time friend, all the very best and I’m confident he will do very well at Adam’s.”
Walker also owns Doonside Hotel in Western Sydney, and in May he sold Norton’s Irish Pub in Leichhardt in Sydney’s inner-west to Merivale for a sum similar to that of his latest purchase – around $24 million.
“The owner was one of the last remaining Western Sydney owner-operators in a climate where independent single hotel ownership is diminishing,” said JLL vice president Kate MacDonald, who managed the invitation only off-market sale with managing director John Musca.
“We know that a decision like this doesn’t come lightly, however the timing from a family objective aspect and strength of the market seemed to align.”
Musca said, “The tumultuous ownership experiences across the hospitality sector since the onset of Covid have no doubt given rise to some resetting of many generational hotelier family outlooks, however it is only in conjunction with an extraordinary weight of capital to the asset-class and as a result, the strongest pricing outcomes seen in over two decades of hotel transactions.”