Amber Symond’s plans revealed for Potts Point hotel Simpsons

John Symond’s wife is throwing millions of dollars at a boutique hotel which the couple bought for $12.5m last year. Here’s what she’s planning.

Amber Symond, the wife of John Symond proposes to spend $4.9 million converting her recent Potts Point boutique hotel purchase into a private four-bedroom residence with cinema room, gym and library.

The 1890s-built house on dress-circle Challis Avenue was bought for $12.5 million late last year.

The home, set between Macleay and Victoria streets, will be in the medium term an investment for Amber Symond, although it’s rumoured to be their eventual downsized home.

The current Sydney home of Amber and John is the Point Piper mansion for which her husband was once offered – and rejected – more than $100 million five years ago before it was pulled from the market.

John and Amber Symond.

The Tzannes Architect plans keep the Potts Point Federation arts and craft facade intact. It will come with a very modern three storey extension on the rear lane with zinc metal framed mansard roofing that replaces the 1920 rear addition and the conservatory added in 1987. It also seeks an extension of the basement level to be 147 sqm, taking the total internal space to 850 sqm.

“Maintaining Killountan’s original street presence to Challis Ave was imperative,” the development application submission to Sydney City Council advised.

“The paint colours proposed are reminiscent of the original colour scheme, based on historic photographs and also takes inspiration from architect John Barlow’s other significant Sydney residence, St Kevin’s in Woollahra,” it added.

It will sit in gardens by the landscaper, Dangar Barin Smith.

It was until recently known as the boutique hotel Simpsons. Since its purchase Amber Symond padlocked the front gate of the now closed 14-room boutique hotel with 605 sqm internal space, although has allowed the premises to be used as a location for photo shoots.

The residence which does not have the ostentatious architectural features of the times sits on a 650 sqm holding, built in 1892 to a design by architect John Bede Barlow for his cousin the prominent politician John Lane Mullins.

The former boutique hotel.

The interiors before Symond bought the property.

Ripe for transformation …

It is listed by the National Trust of Australia having appeared in the 1893 Annual Architectural Review, when named Killountan, joining other well-known Barlow homes, including Keadue in Elizabeth Bay and St Kevin’s in Woollahra, which last traded when bought by Paul and Anita Keating in the early 1990s.

Barlow was the president of the Institute of Architects of NSW between 1897 and 1902.

The Toohey’s director, John Lane-Mullins, who was a longtime member of the NSW Legislative Council, was a man of considerable means. The father of five was a leader of Roman Catholic laity, including being treasurer of the St Mary’s Cathedral Building Fund from the 1870s.

His family was from County Cork, Ireland, where the family home was also named Killountan. The family sold the home in 1914 to Aaron Blashki, a Sydney merchant who was president of the Great Synagogue. He sold the home which then opened as Chester Hospital in 1919 for the treatment of Red Cross workers who had contracted influenza. It later became a boarding house.

Simpsons opened as a boutique hotel operated by the Farris family in 1988, and was purchased by local solicitor Keith Wherry as a going concern in 2002 for $2.85 million.