The City Lodge Hotel in Newtown, Johannesburg, has closed after just  over a decade of being in business and on 25 March Broll Auctions and Sales auctioned the building.

The property will be sold vacant, with the lease terminating at the end of May 2026.

On paper, nothing about the property sounds like a failure. 

It was developed by Atterbury in 2015 at a cost of about R146 million. At the time of opening, the three-star hotel was the City Lodge Hotel Group’s first hotel in the Johannesburg CBD and the first big branded hotel to open in the city centre in more than two decades.

It has 148 rooms, a restaurant, two boardrooms, a gym, a pool and 55 basement parking bays.

The City Lodge group is hardly struggling. The brand has been operating for more than 40 years and runs nearly 60 hotels across South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Mozambique.

Read the full article in the Mail & Guardian here.