O’Maille’s Hotel in High Street has been shut since April last year and owners, Cook-Beaumont Hotel Group, have engaged agents L.J. Colquhoun Dixon to sell the 142-year-old watering hole.

The owners will retain its other Wodonga pub, The Blazing Stump Hotel. They announced last year O’Maille’s Hotel had shut to undergo renovations.

Agent Andrew Dixon said demolition was an option open to new owners with the current owners hoping to attract $700,000 from the sale.

“It has been closed for some time and the owners have decided they want to sell,” he said.

“It is a big site. It is an older style building and well positioned, but it needs work done to it.

“There are opportunities to refurbish or even demolish and start again.”

The site area is about 3700 square metres and potential future uses include a micro-brewery, restaurant or another commercial business.

O’Maille’s Hotel is being sold by expression of interest, which closes May 15.

The hotel’s liquor licence is also part of the sale.

The original pub built on the site in the 1870s was known as the Railway Hotel before being re-named the Murray River Hotel.

It was re-badged as the city’s first Irish-themed pub when the present owners took over in 2008.

In 2001, the owners won a battle at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal to build 24 budget guest rooms on a car park at the rear of the hotel after being refused by Wodonga Council a year earlier.

Melbourne-based Cook-Beaumont Hotel Group bought O’Maille’s a year after buying the Blazing Stump Hotel from the Perry family.

The Perry family has re-entered the Wodonga pub scene with the construction of the Huon Hill hotel.