Ace Hotel Sydney

Ace Hotel Sydney opened on May 18, 2022 in Surry Hills, marking Ace Hotel Group's first property in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. The 264-room lifestyle hotel occupies a newly built tower on the site of the old Tyne House brickworks, pairing Flack Studio's 1970s-inflected interiors with a food and drink program designed to pull in the neighborhood, not just hotel guests.

The place

The hotel sits at 47-53 Wentworth Avenue in Surry Hills, an inner-city district just south of Sydney's central business district known for its terrace houses, independent design studios and dense restaurant scene. Central Station is a short walk away, and Hyde Park, Darlinghurst and Redfern all sit within easy reach on foot. Surry Hills has spent recent decades shifting from a working-class garment and printing district into one of Sydney's most concentrated hospitality neighborhoods, and Ace's arrival, its first outpost anywhere south of the equator, reads as a bet on that trajectory continuing rather than an attempt to define a new one.

The concept

Ace Hotel Group built the 18-storey property as part of a roughly AUD 350 million mixed-use development, on a site with a working past: it takes its name from Tyne House, an early Australian brickworks that once stood there. Melbourne-based Flack Studio led the interior design, working with an ochre-red palette, an acoustic straw-clad wall and a sunken lounge finished in burnt orange and tan that the studio has described as a nod to 1970s suburban Australia. Custom signage and typeface were developed with Studio Ongarato, and the art program includes new commissions from Australian artists Tony Albert and Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran alongside a rotating collection of contemporary local work.

The 264 rooms and suites follow Ace's familiar playbook of turntables, curated vinyl and guitars for guest use, but are sized and finished for a Sydney market rather than transplanted wholesale from the brand's North American properties. Ace Hotel Group president Brad Wilson framed the opening around inclusivity and community, positioning the hotel's ground floor (restaurant, lobby bar and laneway café) as public space as much as hotel amenity, a strategy the brand has used since its Portland original to root itself in a neighborhood rather than sit apart from it.

Dining & wellness

Loam, the ground-floor restaurant, is led by executive chef Heidi Flanagan with a vegetable-forward, seasonal menu built around produce from independent farmers and producers. The Lobby Bar, with a drinks program overseen by Mike Bennie of P&V Wine + Liquor Merchants, operates on a walk-ins-only basis. Good Chemistry, a laneway café and bar on Foy Lane, serves coffee, pastries and light food through the day. Kiln, the rooftop restaurant and bar helmed by chef Mitch Orr, opened on the 18th floor in the months following the hotel's launch.