Courthouse Hotel at Southport close to sale by owner Hans Torv

GLASSES will be raised and fingers uncrossed if the deal to buy the troublesome Courthouse Hotel goes through for its owners who have their share of disappointments.

The Courthouse Hotel at Southport.

HANS Torv, who can include “former publican’’ on his resume, may soon have reason to raise a glass and say Cheers! – and perhaps then add: Good riddance.

The Hot Tomato radio station boss has a buyer in tow for his troublesome pub with no beer, the idle Courthouse Hotel in Southport.

Hans Torv at the Courthouse Hotel. Picture: Mike Batterham

He no doubt has his fingers crossed that the deal, which is unconditional, gets across the line after two previous disappointments, one as bitter as a slice of gin-and-tonic lemon.

Wraps are being kept on just who the party is that will hand over a cheque for the Courthouse, and on the size of the cheque.

One suggestion is that it is an Asian buyer keen to capitalise on the hotel’s prominent main-street position at the edge of Southport’s Chinatown precinct.

It seems almost certain that the building will not resume life as a hotel.

The sale also apparently is one that involves solely the property and not the poker machines that formerly supplemented the Courthouse’s revenue. The 30 pokie licences, believed to be worth around $2 million, have been sold.

The Courthouse Hotel.

Former Sydney disc jockey Hans and sister Anna, at one time Mrs Rupert Murdoch, own the hotel via their Clipper Property Group, which bought it for $5 million 11 years ago.

They closed the doors on the venerable hotel in 2015 after the first “sale’’ failed to proceed on the day of settlement.

The “buyer’’, Brisbane’s ­Anthony Moreton group, had signed up for the property in 2014 and spruiked plans for a residential tower and an upgraded hotel on what is one of the most prominent corners in Southport.

Hans summed up his feelings over the failed deal by saying: “To default on a contract in the final hours, not show up at settlement, and leave staff in limbo is something we would not do.”

Hans Torv looks out at Southport from the Courthouse Hotel. Picture Mike Batterham

During later efforts to sell the Courthouse, Tamworth’s Pub Group apparently was on the verge of committing to a deal when a health issue with a pub principal stymied the plan.

Life at the Courthouse was not always a case of swimming upstream for Hans and his sister, who spent $1 million or so on the property after buying it.

It traded profitably for some time until its turnover was derailed by work, outside the front door, on the city’s tram system.

While Hans was nursing the hotel through that problem, the Gold Coast Hospital closed and visits to the bar from some of its 2500 staff ceased.

The future of the Courthouse is unclear but one suggestion is that the buyer wants to have shops at street level and perhaps backpacker rooms on the first floor.

Frederick Fass, who opened the hotel as the Queen’s Arm’s in 1885, surely would be bemused by such a transformation.