Located at the high profile Normanby Fiveways in inner-Brisbane’s Red Hill it has been co-owned by Michael Dempsey and Otto Wilhelm since 1999.
Built in 1890, the heritage-listed hotel consists of an enormous 3,655 square metre site incorporating the multi-level heritage listed pub and a huge car park. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register in 1992.
Dempsey said he was selling the hotel in order to concentrate on his core business of property technology through real estate property management software, Console.
He sold his electronics payments business Ezidebit for $305 million in 2014.
The Normanby Hotel freehold and pub operation is being offered for sale by CBRE Hotels.
“The hotel boasts huge underlying value with 35 gaming machines on site offering significant gaming upside potential,” CBRE Hotels’ Queensland director Paul Fraser said.
“On top of this, the prime location of the hotel and the huge expanse of land this asset offers makes it an obvious development play in the future.”
In 2016, a proposal by The Normanby Hotel to build a 15-storey development and underground nightclub next to the hotel was rejected by Brisbane City Council’s City Planning Committee.
The building, which would have contained 14 units, a hotel, short-term accommodation, a nightclub and a shop, was planned to be built on the Normanby Hotel’s car park. The committee voted unanimously in favour of opposing the plans on the basis of the height and size of the proposed hotel tower.
The Normanby Hotel also used to house one of Brisbane’s most well-known trees, a 100-year-old fig tree, that had to be removed from the site in 2016 after a severe storm knocked it over.