Justin Hemmes buying Kings Green for $200m to crown Merivale empire

Another party palace could be on the cards for the prime Sydney site currently home to four heritage-styled buildings.

Justin Hemmes’ Merivale operation has picked up the amalgamation of four buildings in the King, Clarence and York Street precinct between Town Hall and Wynyard. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Entertainment tsar Justin Hemmes has made a dramatic play for a new site in the Sydney CBD, which could one day be transformed into a super complex to rival his landmark Ivy party palace.

The billionaire has quietly bought the Kings Green development site for about $200m, where plans for a $1.8bn office skyscraper will now make way for one of his trademark high-end bar and restaurant precincts.

His Merivale operation has picked up the amalgamation of four buildings in the King, Clarence and York Street precinct between Town Hall and Wynyard. It is likely to open laneway-style restaurants to activate the buildings which form a land bank adjoining the Hotel CBD on King Street.

In coming years the company will undertake a major revamp of the heritage styled buildings, likely turning them into Sydney’s next big entertainment precinct. Although a boutique hotel may come down the track, Merivale will not pursue a major skyscraper on the site.

The buildings are being acquired from the private TrueGreen Positive Impact Group, which assembled the properties for about $170m and had initially hoped to build a 49-storey green office tower by 2026.

But Merivale has swept in after a sales campaign via agents CI Australia, which also drew interest from top office developers, with the Hemmes complex seen as the best option for the site.

TrueGreen had planned to capitalise on Sydney’s new tower cluster zones, which allow buildings up to 330 metres high, but the Hemmes move will get underway faster and likely become one of the next city institutions.

His Merivale empire is riding the bullish return to entertainment and restaurants as operators are booked out and entertainment starved patrons flock back into up-market venues.

The company’s existing venues also face competition from the now established Barangaroo venues and a series of restaurants and bars opening up around Circular Quay as new office and residential developments launch.

But Merivale has brought a unique touch to the city that big corporations can struggle to match.

The billionaire pub and restaurant mogul also has new venues on the go ranging from the Sydney Cricket Ground to pubs in the NSW coastal hot spot of Narooma and the iconic Byron Bay, as well as a Melbourne CBD opening.

Hemmes increased his wealth slightly on The List from $1.24bn in 2021 to $1.31bn in 2022 and is constantly on the look out for trends to capitalise on for his ever-expanding Merivale empire.

He has pushed outside NSW and will later this year, open in Victoria after buying Tomasetti House on Flinders Lane in the Melbourne CBD for $43m. He also bought another coastal icon – the Lorne Hotel – for $38m.

The latest site will in time crown the other 70 odd venues in Merivale‘s properties, including hot restaurants like South-East Asian restaurant MuMu at the Ivy, dumpling house Mr Wong, the luxe Mimi’s at Coogee Pavilion.

The heritage elements of the buildings on the 2,143sq m site at Kings Green would be left untouched as has been done at Merivale’s other city venues.

Hemmes knows the city well with his hospitality empire kicking off when the Hotel CBD on the corner of King and York streets was launched in 1995. The Establishment, created from the burnt out ruins of the former George Patterson House on George Street, opened in 2000, with Ivy following in 2007.

The Kings Green site is expected to sport the latest in up-market cuisine and some of the favourites in existing Merivale establishments could one day be housed in the new venue, potentially when Hemmes finally decides to overhaul the Ivy.

In 2019, Hemmes revealed plans for a $1.5bn redevelopment of the Ivy complex which would dominate a Sydney city block.

Hemmes told The Australian at the time that he planned a 52,500sq m tower ­opposite Wynyard Station, amalgamating his Ivy party palace and adding a substantial office component, a luxury hotel and an opulent hospitality precinct.

That project would take up to seven years to complete, with world-class local and international architects to be engaged in a design competition for the proposed five-star extravaganza.

For Merivale it is something of a homecoming to the city after a successful push into regional and coastal pubs. The empire grew out of the fashion empire run by Hemmes’ parents who first began their foray into hospitality in 1970 with a Thai tea cafe in their Sydney CBD fashion store.

Fast forward 50 years and the ever-expanding empire of bars, restaurants and pubs continues to spread across Sydney and newer parts of the country in a familiar pattern.

The purchase also shows a belief in the city. While years of government legislation and a pandemic threatened to put an end to Sydney’s night-life, The Ivy remained an icon of the city’s nightclub scene as many of its competitors went out of business and Merivale appears keen to create its next one-company hospitality precinct.