Hillsong Church: Festival Hall sells to Hillsong Church for $23m
Festival Hall, the legendary Melbourne music venue that hosted packed houses for the Beatles, Johnny Cash and Frank Sinatra, has been sold "by God's grace" to the Hillsong Church for $23 million.
In a video posted to Hillsong's YouTube channel on Sunday, the church's founder Brian Houston told his congregation: "By God's grace ... we've been able to purchase Festival Hall.''
The transaction, but not the buyer, was confirmed by West Melbourne property sales agents Colliers International, with title records showing that the deal was settled on 16 October for $ 23,375,000.
The large single-storey hall, originally built in 1915, was destroyed by fire in 1955 and rebuilt for the Olympic Games a year later. Recently, artists such as Oasis, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Powderfinger played there.
Christian megachurch Hillsong have confirmed that they have acquired beloved Melbourne concert venue Festival Hall.As first reported by NME, the pentecostal monolith took to their YouTube channel on October 25th to confirm that they have purchased the venue.At the 27-minute mark of the Sunday service, Pastor Bryan Houston announced that Hillsong had made the acquisition.
“By gods grace, we’ve been able to purchase Festival Hall,” he said. “It is going to become the city location for Hillsong Melbourne.”
The church intends to allow the venue to keep hosting live events throughout the week, but it would be “the house of God” on Sundays.
Houston continued, “Hillsong Melbourne has had to move around a lot with rented venues and so on. We’ve started an entity called Community Venues [Pty Ltd.] – that have been able to require Festival Hall.
“Hillsong Church will be the anchored venue. For every Sunday night or Sunday morning or whenever we have church, it will be our venue.“We’re going to keep running it as a community venue so it can reach the community. We’re excited about that.”Elsewhere during the service, Hillsong shared a short promotional video about the new venue narrated by Tim and Nicole Douglas — the Pastors of Melbourne’s Hillsong arm.“This journey of purchasing this incredible facility started about 18 months ago. Just happened to hear about that it was for sale and started inquiring, thinking that it was a long shot,” Tim Douglass explained.“Now, we’re sitting in a miracle. God can make a way even through impossible circumstances.”
It was also known as the House of Stoush, with some of the biggest names in boxing − Lionel Rose, Johnny Famechon and Anthony Mundine − gracing the ring inside.
The listed buyer of the Dudley Street venue is Community Venues Limited, which Mr Houston revealed was an entity set up by the church for it to use Festival Hall as its Melbourne base.
Mr Houston said the hope was to renovate the venue and Hillsong will be the main tenant. "Hillsong will be the anchor tenant − we're going to continue running it as a community venue," he said. The Christian mega church is known for its lively worship and use of rock music during services. Colliers' Matt Stagg, Dave Walker and Daniel Wolman negotiate the deal. Mr Stagg said a consortium of media and entertainment groups originally contracted to purchase the property, but the transaction fell through in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The promo saw Douglass echo Houston’s past claims that it will continue to host “community” events at Festival Hall unrelated to Hillsong.
“It has served the people of this city in different events over the years, and it’s going to continue to do that. We just get to be the church who purchases it,” Tim Douglass commented.
Founded 30 years ago in Sydney, the Hillsong empire has churches in city centres in 30 countries, on six continents. Including New York City, New Jersey, Boston, Connecticut, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Dallas, Kansas City, Phoenix, London, Spain, Barcelona, Berlin, Konstanz, Düsseldorf, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bali, and Tokyo.
"Colliers then promptly placed the under-bidder into due diligence, which was successful and finally settled in October 2020," he said.
The historic venue also hosted a range of events during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
In 2018 the site was granted permanent heritage protection, protecting it from demolition and development plans including the building of apartments on the site.
Hillsong were contacted for further comment.
