He Said/She Said: Queenscliff Hotel or Sorrento's Continental?
It's a real choice for hotel investors currently across the bay in Melbourne.
But Sorrento or Queenscliff?
The Queenscliff Hotel has been relisted for sale, with a private auction scheduled for this Friday, 20 March.
The Continental Hotel at Sorrento has been listed by the Di Pietro family with offers due 16 April.
Our property contrarians Jonathan Chancellor and Margie Blok debate the merits of the two hotels on opposite side of The Heads, yet only 12 kilometres apart.
HE SAID:
It's the striking 1887 Queen Anne-style building (pictured above) for me. If only for the special occasion memories held from when the late Mietta O'Donnell ran the hotel as a fine dining destination between 1978 and 1983. Admitting it wasn't as regular haunt as her ornate Alfred Place institution in the laneway off Collins Street at the business end of town.
Queenscliff became a significant tourist destination in the late 19th century with holiday-makers taking a two hour paddle steamer journey from Melbourne.
Andrew Harlock and Tim Derham at Abercromby’s are selling the property on a walk-in, walk-out basis, with initial expectations at $3.5 million plus.
The hotel is still taking guests, but the restaurant served its last meals on Christmas Day, following the death of owner Johann Schuetz who with his wife, Theresa bought the property in 2002.
The 1887 built Queenscliff Hotel on the western tip of Port Phillip bay was designed by Melbourne architects Reed, Henderson & Smart, the same architects responsible for the State Library of Victoria, Collins Street Baptist Church, Melbourne Trades Hall and a number of Melbourne university buildings.
It was built by NW Frogley in the English Queen Anne style for Martha Nugent and Joseph Goslin, wealthy local citizens at the time.
Heritage documents describe its polygonal tower, with its coned roof and bellcast profile and gables, as a reflection of northern European Renaissance architecture, particularly from countries as such France and the Netherlands.
Ofcourse while I adore limestone bathrooms, a little bit of Tudor-style woodwork and elaborate fretwork, turrets and towers with conical or pyramid-shaped roofs are always of acute interest.
I fell in love with Queen Anne over champers at the first Queen Anne house in Australia, Caerleon in the suburb of Bellevue Hill.
The Schuetz family acquired the property in 2002 from restaurateur Patricia O’Donnell, sister of the late Mietta O'Donnell. Schuetz offered the hotel in 2010 attracting offers close to $4 million.
SHE SAID:
Coming from Sydney, it has to be the limestone Sorrento Contintental Hotel for me. NSW just doesn't see enough limestone or bluestone, just plenty of sandstone.
It was the pioneer thespian and entrepreneur George Coppin who built the mansard-capped hotel in the 1870s, the four storey limestone building The "Conti" (pictured below). Jonathan can have his fusty selection.
The seaside spruiker shipped wealthy Melburnians to the Mornington Peninsula on his paddle steamers, and then put them on his tramway to stay at his Hotel Continental.
I love being close to the golf course.
It had been on the toss of a coin - a choice between Australia and America - that Coppin sailed from Sussex on the Templar, arriving in Sydney in 1843 with his partner, Maria Watkins Burroughs, where he was to perform at the Royal Victoria Theatre on Pitt Street.
Coppin briefly owned the Clown Hotel, directly opposite the theatre, which failed as Sydney's first permanent musical entertainment venue, before he moved south to Melbourne.
The Continental Hotel at Sorrento has been listed for sale by the Di Pietro family with $15 million expectations.
The hotel will be sold with freehold and business with offers due 16 April through Sothebys International agent Rob Curtain, in conjunction with CBRE.