Exclusive: It doesn’t look like much from the outside but Hobson’s pub has ignited a fierce battle between its publican and landlord.
The lease for the Sandringham watering hole, located in the beachside suburb just 30 minutes from Melbourne’s CBD, is set to expire in October and publican Andrew Watson is doing everything in his power to convince landlord Daniel Enright to renew it.
That includes starting an online petition, filming a short documentary and encouraging locals to email Enright in a bid to save the pub.
“Quite a few people within the community have written to him and voiced their disapproval,” Watson told 9news.com.au.
“Unfortunately, he just doesn’t care.”
Watson bought the business from the previous tenant back in 2007 and transformed Hobson’s from an Italian restaurant into a bar and live music venue.
His original lease ran until 2010 but he was offered three five-year extensions, which he used to extend the lease until October 2025.
In that time, he and late daughter Jessica, who was the pub’s manager, have served almost every member of the Sandringham community.
So Watson was devastated when Enright informed him that there would be no option to extend the lease for another five years.
It means he has to find a new venue to operate out of by October, or lose the business entirely.
“I’d walk away with nothing, basically, other than just selling the assets we own,” Watson said.
“We’re trying to find somewhere where we could maybe transpose everything that we have into another building [but] it’s looking very, very shaky.”
Moving into a new venue would be a costly endeavour, one Watson isn’t sure he can afford.
It would also mean leaving behind priceless memories with daughter Jessica, who died in 2023, and his wife, who passed in 2024.
Watson has spent months trying to convince Enright to extend the lease so he can keep the pub going.
He started a Save Our Pub campaign and publicised Enright’s personal email address, encouraging patrons and Sandringham locals to email him about the campaign.
“The building is not just a building, it’s a sense of community,” Watson said.
Almost 13,000km away, Enright has spent the last few months fending off angry emails from total strangers.
“People are trying to shame me and bully me into allowing him to have what he wants,” he told 9news.com.au.
“But people have leases in businesses all the time, and leases end.”
Born and raised in Melbourne, Enright helped his mother buy the Hobson’s building in 1998 and became sole proprietor when she died in 2011.
By then, he was living in Palm Springs, California and was more than happy to let the existing tenant – Watson – carry on business as usual for a while.
But he had always dreamed of running his own business in the building.
“I started talking to my wife about it and we decided that when the lease ran out, our kids would be off to college, the timing would be really good,” Enright said
He told Watson about these plans around 2017, at which point the relationship soured.
Enright said that he is conscious of Watson’s personal connection to the building and the pub’s contribution to the local community over the years, but he has his own dream for the building – one that may be more lucrative.
Watson acknowledged business had been slow since the COVID-19 pandemic and that he had been on a fixed rent for several years.
Enright alleged that the fixed rent agreement has cost him up to $400,000 in potential profit over the years.
“The business struggles. He [Watson] struggles to pay rent,” Enright claimed.
“I’m not trying to be some white knight or anything, but I literally chose to give my tenant a better deal … because I wanted it to work for him.”
But with the lease coming to an end, Enright is ready to take over the building and turn it into something new for himself and Sandringham.
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Watson is still hopeful that he can change Enright’s mind about extending the lease and his Change.org petition has attracted more than 750 signatures.
But with every day that passes, his hope wanes.
Soon he fears his only option will be to find a new venue for the business he spent the better part of two decades building.
”There might be someone out there that owns a building and wouldn’t mind taking it on,” he said hopefully.
