Interview: Indie label owner brings hope for Hopetoun Hotel

Adrian Bull, owner of 23-year-old independent label Blind Records (LOVE LOVE, WaxWorks), has taken to social media to announce he purchasediconic Sydney live music venue The Hopetoun Hotel, seven years after its closure.

“So I made a potentially childish decision on Friday,” Bull wrote on Facebook on Monday (November 7). “It’ll certainly leave me in debt until the day I shuffle off. Sydney we will win again. My house will always be your home.”

Speaking to TMN yesterday, Bull said the discussions to purchase the pub took three weeks, and that the deal was done on Friday, November 4. However, it won’t be open for business for another 12 months.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he said. “The upstairs accommodation is actually in pretty good condition but the bar is in complete disarray, and obviously the downstairs will just have to go and become storage I would think.

“[…] The entire place needs to be rewired and re-set up to make everything safe for people – you only want people to be safe at shows,” he added. “It’s a long-term goal and this entire process has only really just started.”

The abrupt closing of The Hopetoun in 2009 was felt nationwide. It hosted live music seven nights a week and was a breeding ground for some of Australia’s most beloved bands, including Front End Loader, Steve Kilbey, Paul Kelly and Sarah Blasko.

Bull has plans to relaunch the venue as a nightly live music hub, but believes it will cost him around $900,000 to get the venue up and running again.

One of the venue’s previous owners, Evangelos Patakas cited fines from police and pressure from the council to upgrade the venue amid safety concerns for its closure. At the time, Patakas said it would reopen the following year in 2010 but according to Bull, the venue was purchased by a couple in mid-2011 who wanted to turn it into a nightclub.

Bull said he purchased The Hopetoun from the couple using a “hefty bank loan”.

According to Liquor & Gaming NSW, former owner and venue managerPaul McCarthy is listed as the current licensee.Liquor & Gaming NSWtold TMN no application has been lodged as yet for a transfer or change to the licensee.

Meanwhile, the most recent property sales report of the venue listed with the NSW Government Land & Property Information notes the last sale to be in 1997 for over $1.5 million.

Bulltold TMN his purchase of The Hopetoun will be officially recorded after settlement in just under eight weeks.

As for the council’s safety concerns, Bull told TMN he will take the time needed to get the venue up to standard but is prepared to “fight the council” to relaunch The Hopetoun as a live music venue.

“I can fight the council into the ground, it doesn’t mean I’ll win but I’ll certainly give it a shot,” he said. “[…] If what it turns out to be at the end of the day is just a pub, well, I’ll sell it and walk away, because that’s not what I want.”

Bull has no immediate plans for the venue’s relaunch just yet, but told TMN he’s already had offers from bands wanting to perform and also from tradesman, who have volunteered to help with renovations.

“The building is not safe and that’s the massive problem,” he said. “[…] It really is going to take 10 or 12 months to get it working, it’s as simple as that.

“If I could afford nine tradies to go in every day it would be a lot quicker but a lot of work is going to be done by people who over time have enjoyed the Hopetoun just like I did.”

Bull’s history with the venue began when he was just 14-years-old. He told TMN he would leave High School on the North Shore early every Tuesday to go to the venue.

“It’s great to think of as a nostalgic trip, but the idea is not to actually look back, just look forward and, really, Sydney deserves that place to be open,” he said. “Nobody else was going to [bring live music back to the Hoey] so why not?”

In 2012, the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage recommended that the 160-year-old pub (formerly known as the Cookatoo Inn)should be retained and conserved.