Darlinghurst’s Flinders Hotel up for sale

Sydney’s Flinders Hotel in Darlinghurst is for sale – almost nine years after it last traded hands for about $2.5 million.

Potential buyers have been told the three-level hotel plus basement – which succumbed to Sydney’s lock-out laws in 2015 before re-opening a year later under new management – is being sold with a price guide of between $6 million and $7 million.

The heritage-list ed bar and club, which now holds regular parties on Fridays and Saturdays with DJs who play “house, disco and everything in between”, was once a popular gay bar until the early 2000s before it reinvented itself in recent times by targeting an urban crowd with a small bar vibe.

Before renovations, culture magazine Broadsheet described the exposed brick building as “a sticky-floored, dance-all-night venue that poured Sydney’s best pickleback (a shot of whiskey chased by a shot of pickle juice).” Pub industry news site PubTIC called it “a somewhat sordid late-trader, typically haunted by Oxford Street flotsam and revellers that possibly should have gone home”.

Located about two minutes’ walk from Oxford Street at 63-65 Flinders Street, and owned by Brisbane GP Malcolm Nyst and his partner Susan through their company Consolidated Assets Management, the building built in 1918 is one of several pubs on the way to the Sydney Cricket Ground and Sydney Football Stadium, which sports fans often frequent on their way to (or from) Moore Park.

Another venue on the way to Moore Park, The Taphouse, which specialised in craft beer, recently closed its doors.

Ray White Commercial’s Dean Haustead has been engaged to sell the property, which went on sale on May 22, and has proposed plans to develop the rooftop into a new terrace with a third bar that will have panoramic views of the inner city. Haustead offered no comment when contacted by this masthead.

The venue has a full hotel liquor license and a 24-hour trading permit between Monday and Saturday.