Double Bay's Sheaf comes with golden expectations

Popular Sydney eastern suburbs watering hole, the Golden Sheaf Hotel in Double Bay, has been listed with $80-million-plus hopes by Bruce Solomon's Solotel Group.

The heritage-listed 1936 pub was bought for $5,327,000 in 1991. Its New South Head Road premises was expanded after $4.8 million was spent in 2006 with purchase of the adjacent George's restaurant from Leo Varvaritis. The refurbished hotel and rear beer garden was launched in 2009.

Solotel has earmarked the sale proceeds to fund its new Bar Sydney in Westfield Sydney, and a possible complex in New York.

The Golden Sheaf forms part of Solotel's portfolio of 16 hotels and four restaurants.

The group includes the two Aria restaurants in Sydney and Brisbane, run by celebrity chef Matt Moran, who will also run the new Bar Sydney.

Jones Lang LaSalle's national director of pub investment sales John Musca has listed the Golden Sheaf. The SMH reported it is considered among the country's most profitable pubs.

The Golden Sheaf’s neighbour is the Kiora Lands proposed development – a joint venture between Woollahra Council and Woolworths, who have often been mooted buyers. The current Kiora project will occupy the current Woolworths site and council car park and eventually house a four-storey complex.

It was 1987 when the Sheaf was contemplated as being part of a bigger development during its ownership by John Lyons’ Realty Property Group and its major shareholder, Sir Ron Brierley’s Industrial Equities Ltd. There had been brief contemplation of a 12-storey international hotel.

The hotel had been bought by the Lyons syndicate for a reported $10 million from the well-known Ryan hotelier family in 1986. The Ryans, who had been there since 1974, sold because they thought the land content had become too valuable for it to be just a pub.