DESIGN & BUILD
WATERSIDE
glamour
A
ndrew Lazarus, known for his operation of The Eastern Hotel in Sydney’s Bondi, views Shoal Bay Country Club as his retirement project. He spends most of his time up in Shoal Bay now, loving both the venue and the lifestyle. In mid-2016, Lazarus had bought his first regional New South Wales venue, acquiring the Exchange Hotel in the Newcastle suburb of Hamilton. With Shoal Bay being in close proximity, when the opportunity presented itself, he was happy to consider it. “I saw value with Sydney hotel prices going up the way they did. I think there’s regional opportunities that are certainly good value. It’s a great lifestyle as well – I feel like I’m on holidays up here.” And once he visited the property, it was love at first sight. “The country club is just a unique property. It’s on the water, it’s just beautiful. And I could see what could be done with the hotel in terms
of transforming it into a large-scale, familyfriendly venue – which it certainly was not.”
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE At the time of the purchase, the venue was slightly dated in terms of its facilities. The clientele was very much the schooner-drinking tradesmen crowd, with hardly any females frequenting the hotel. So Lazarus set up about targeting families to get a much broader demographic visiting the hotel. “It had a very narrow clientele, whereas I wanted to build something that catered to everyone from the area. That’s been the most satisfying thing about the transformation, that we’ve managed to attract 18-80 year olds with these facilities.” The Port Stephens population swells during summer, school holidays and long weekends, as tourists – mainly from Sydney – holiday in the area. The pub is also situated next to a 200-room Ramada Hotel (the two venues were originally owned and developed by the same
LOCATED AT THE MOST NORTHERN POINT OF NEW SOUTH WALE’S PORT STEPHENS REGION, ANDREW LAZARUS HAS RESTORED THE SHOAL BAY COUNTRY CLUB TO THE BEAUTY OF ITS 1950S HEYDAY. person) which does not have any F&B facilities of its own, so Shoal Bay Country Club supplies all of the F&B services for the hotel’s guests. While there was definitely the possibility of attracting tourists to the area, Lazarus wanted to focus primarily on appealing to locals, who would bring the venue steady patronage all year round. The hotelier engaged Rachel Luchetti, co-director of award-winning architecture and interior design firm Luchetti Krelle, to re-envision the pub. The brief was to build a large-format hotel that offered a wide range of facilities, could cater for families, had multiple food offerings, excellent live music facilities and function areas. “You’ve got a big local community there that you can draw from, but it is as at the end of the line, with Shoal Bay being the last stop in Port Stephens. To get people motivated to go past Nelson Bay, to your destination venue in Shoal Bay – obviously the views help, but you also need to draw them on other levels,” states Luchetti.
AUSTRALIAN HOTELIER JUNE 2018 | 37