General News
7 July, 2022
Minyip's Club Hotel goes to market
Minyip’s Club Hotel on Main Street has been listed for sale on Ray White’s website and presents an opportunity for a new business to sprout.
Minyip’s Club Hotel on Main Street has been listed for sale on Ray White’s website and presents an opportunity for a new business to sprout.
The hotel is famously known for being a filming location for "The Dry" starring Eric Bana in 2019 and "The Flying Doctors" series between 1986 and 1993, for which the hotel was renamed The Magestic Hotel.
The hotel's agent Josh Todd said that the 40-room building on 4048 metre square of land has the potential to bring anything to Minyip but would benefit most from an accommodation business.
"Certainly, I'm not a local. I don't pretend to be a local by any stretch of the imagination, but just the general feeling that I've had talking to some of those that are local to the community of Minyip, is that I think there's a bit of an appetite for the venue to be reopened," he said.
"There's still a real opportunity to have a thriving hotel, dining and accommodation business there because of the scale.
"We are very hopeful, as an agent, that we want the property sold, we make no secret about that. My job is to maximise the sale outcome for the vendor, but we would love to see it sell to someone that's going to bring it back and operate it again."
The hotel has attracted "a robust amount of interest" from interstate and Melbourne-based buyers, but Minyip locals have also expressed an interest in the property.
The hotel is currently owned by PPN Property Co's owner Phil Pitt-Nyde in Melbourne.
Mr Todd said that as the owner is Melbourne-based, he struggled to keep the business afloat as he wasn't "hands-on" in the business and subsequently closed it for over seven years.
"It's very hard to find someone to manage these sorts of venues for you, for them to be viable. So that's why, for lack of better expression, it sort of got relegated to the to the 'too hard' basket," he said.
The Club Hotel was initially built in July 1907 under the name Mrs Keenan's Club House and was considered one of the most commodious hotels in the Wimmera.
Since then, the building has been mostly unchanged.
"It's a relatively untouched example of what was, at the time, very high-end Federation architecture," Mr Todd said.
"There's not many buildings of that age that haven't been renovated or changed. I think from a historic perspective, a lot of the original features have been retained and is still intact with the property, such as the ornate iron fretwork, the press metal ceilings and the grand staircase leading up to the upper levels."
The property price has been left for potential buyers to offer. The property is determined to be sold on July 27 when expressions of interest close.