'It was uninhabitable': Former Betoota Advocate co-founder lists Sydney bachelor pad turned family home

• Owner: Piers Grove, former publisher of satirical new site, The Betoota Advocate
• Address: 118 Wyndham Street, Alexandria, NSW
• Type of property: An architect-designed home with park views and a ground-floor commercial space
• Price guide: $2.2 million
• Auction: Saturday, February 18

When Piers Grove purchased his first home – a “bach pad” – in Sydney’s Alexandria in 2003, it was far from the trendy inner-city neighbourhood it is today.

“Alexandria was the least desirable suburb. People would say ‘I’m not coming there’. This is when Surry Hills was the emerging trendy spot. I couldn’t afford it and Redfern was just too dicey, so we wound up there,” he says. “We were kind of the first yuppies to move into the area.”

SOLD - $2,150,000

118 Wyndham Street, Alexandria NSW 2015

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The home, which sits on the corner of Wyndham and Buckland Streets, opposite Alexandria Park, wasn’t in good shape. 

There were three bedrooms, all with deadlocks on the doors, a six-metre long stainless steel bench and the only bathroom was an outhouse, says Grove. “It was uninhabitable.”

Lucky for Grove, then 25, his architect father, who runs his own high-end firm, Grove Architects, was on hand to help.

A year-long renovation saw the building completely gutted, new concrete footings put in and a third storey added. Polished concrete flooring, plywood and corrugated iron feature throughout the home. 

On the first floor, a stainless steel one-wall kitchen flows into an open dining and living space, with leafy park views from the large plywood-framed box windows.

“It’s a really beautiful but very utilitarian building,” says Grove.

Upstairs, two bedrooms sit on either side of a bathroom, with one opening to a tree-covered terrace. A courtyard separates the main building from a self-contained rear studio, which Grove describes as “one of my favourite places in the world”.

“It has floor-to-ceiling openable windows and you look onto Buckland Street through the plane tree,” he says. “That was my hidey-hole for very, very many years.”

While he originally planned to lease out the ground floor as a commercial space to help pay off his mortgage, it instead became ground zero for some of the businesses he helped create, including ethical super fund FutureSuper and satirical news site, The Betoota Advocate.

“Archie and Charlie (co-founders of The Betoota Advocate) would come in every day,” says Grove. “We stayed there for the first three or four years of Betoota.”

A serial entrepreneur, Grove is also co-founder and chair of not-for-profit start-up accelerators EnergyLab and Boomerang Labs, and a partner in sustainability-focused venture capital firm, Impact Ventures. He stepped down as managing director of Junkee Media late last year after selling his stake in the business.

While the home “became like a saloon” to Grove’s circle of media and ad agency friends in its early days, he now shares it with his fiancee Jane, kids Abbie, 7, and Ben, 12, and brown border collie, Scout. 

Grove says the dog-friendly Alexandria Park across the road has served as an extension of the home for his family.

“The park became our backyard. We would go over and have picnics and the dog would go absolutely nuts. That has been the most vital piece of infrastructure in the area for us.”

Like the home, Alexandria has changed dramatically over the past two decades, with the full-height living room window providing the perfect vantage point from which to observe its evolution.

“I’ve stood in that window pretty much every night over the past 20 years and I have watched Alexandria morph and blossom into what it is today,” says Grove. “It’s a huge transformation.”

He recalls when the nearby Alexandria Hotel, once run by former Sydney Swans AFL player Darren “Harry” McAsey, was the community’s main gathering place.

“He basically turned that place into a mecca. He put a big projector out in the backyard and 200 or 300 people would come together to watch Swans games.” 

After sitting empty for years, the hotel has recently been brought back to life by Justin Hemmes’ Merivale Group, with its original interior kept largely intact. And while he once struggled to buy a coffee in the area “for love or money”, Grove now counts eateries COOH and Lucky Kwong among his favourite local spots. 

While he is sad to let go of the home, with his family “rapidly outgrowing” the space, Grove says it’s time for a change. The property is set to go to auction on February 18.

“It’s had some adventures. It’s served its purpose incredibly well,” he says.

“I hope it goes to someone who gets the same utility and pleasure out of it that I have.”