Oxford Street's Colombian Hotel and Gaslight Inn up for sale

Billionaire Sam Arnaout is offloading two Darlinghurst venues as part of an asset sales program — and the street's watching.

Told by Jake Donovan · 13 September 2026

Sam Arnaout's selling the Colombian Hotel and the Gaslight Inn, two venues that sit on the spine of Oxford Street's queer nightlife, as part of what his hospitality group is calling an asset sales program. The billionaire pub owner — estimated fortune north of $3 billion, more than 50 venues across the country — is offloading the pair through JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group with no price guide attached, though the combined annual revenue clears $11.6 million.

Arnaout bought the Colombian, a three-storey former Westpac building on the corner of Oxford and Crown, for about $18 million in October 2016. Two months later he paid another $6 million for the multilevel Gaslight Inn at 278 Crown Street. Both have been significantly upgraded over the past decade, according to the agents handling the sale.

The Colombian operates 21 hours a day, nine in the morning to six the next. It's one of the last venues on Oxford Street where you can still walk in at 4am on a Wednesday and find a room that's open.

Here's the thing about a billionaire with 50 pubs deciding to downsize: he's not selling the pokie palaces in the suburbs that print money. He's selling two venues in Darlinghurst, on a strip that's lost the Palms, the Midnight Shift, the Phoenix, the Beauchamp, Headquarters, and half a dozen others in the last fifteen years. The Colombian and the Gaslight aren't explicitly queer venues in the way the old guard were, but they're part of the infrastructure — late licenses, mixed crowds, rooms that stay open when everything else has shut.

When a venue like this goes on the market, the question isn't just who buys it. It's whether the next owner keeps the license, keeps the hours, keeps the door policy that lets people in at 4am without a credit check and a postcode audit. A $20 million property on Oxford Street can be a lot of things, and a 21-hour boozer is only one of them.

The street's already down to a handful of venues where you can turn up after midnight and not get turned away at the door because you're too gay, too loud, or not wearing the right shoes. Lose another two and the map starts looking like a heritage tour.

No word yet on who's interested or what happens to the licenses if they sell.