Iris Capital swoops on Gaslight
Sam Arnaout’s Iris Capital is building its footprint in Darlinghurst.
It has added the Gaslight Inn to its expanding Sydney pub portfolio, snapping it up for $6 million.
Significantly, the multi-level pub at 278 Crown Street, just off Oxford Street, shares its northern wall with the Colombian Hotel on the corner of Crown and Oxford Street.
Iris bought that in October for $18 million.
The acquisitive Arnaout has also acquired the Hungerford Hill boutique winery and vineyard in the Hunter Valley for more than $6 million and a four-block city site in Newcastle for $39 million. He plans to turn that into a huge mixed-used project.
His company has a history of strategic acquisitions which started with it buying The Bourbon in Kings Cross. That was followed up by more freehold properties including The Empire Hotel.
The off market deal for the Gaslight was negotiated by Ray White Hotel's Andrew Jolliffe and Gerry Quinlan of Manenti Quinlan and Associates.
Joliffe has been busy lately and has been involved in the pub real estate boom around Sydney.
It was only last week that Mr Joliffe sold the Tennyson Hotel to Sydney pub baron Justin Hemmes for a record $37.05 million.
He said he Gaslight Inn is the 14th pub sold in the inner suburbs by Ray White over the last few years.
And the market is booming.
High-profile businessmen John Singleton and Geoff Dixon have put the Marlborough Hotel in Sydney's inner-west Newtown and Kinselas Hotel in Darlinghurst on the market.
And both pubs are being sold through Ray White Hotels.
Add to that the $30 million that former Wallaby Bill Young paid for another well-known Sydney pub, The Five Dock Hotel, last week.
Jolliffe sums up the Sydney pub real estate market succinctly.
"The Sydney pub market is on fire at the moment," Jolliffe told the Australian Financial Review.
by Leon Gettler, December 6th 2016
