Three hotels straddling the glittering lights of Kings Cross have been listed for sale – the Mercure Hotel, the D*Lux and the Diamant Hotel.

Property Group Australand will again try to sell its $70 million Mercure Hotel, formerly known as the Crest Hotel (pictured below), near Kings Cross station.

The group has enlisted Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels agents Mark Durran and John Musca to sell the hotel, which includes gaming pub on the ground floor.

The building is being offered in one line or as different stratas.

The decision to sell the trophy property “in the not too distant future” was raised in Australand’s July results, with the group saying the hotel was not core to its portfolio, though it was performing well.

The Crest Hotel comes with some interesting associations, including links to the recent the death of Michael McGurk.

In 2007, Australand bought the hotel for $63 million from Coogee Bay Hotel owner Chris Cheung. Cheung had bought the hotel from developers Allen Linz and Eduard Litver. After closing the sale, Australand announced plans to convert the building into a series of apartments, waiting for the market to improve.

Australand never saw those plans through, but in 2009 the group came close to selling the building for $72 million to developer Michael Sanchez, whose Benchmark Group planned to do the conversion.

Sanchez narrowly pipped the cash-strapped Michael McGurk, who desperately tried to negotiate a deal to have the syndicate he represented buy the property for $70 million. He died shortly afterwards.

Both deals eventually fell through but the conversion plans were never scrapped, with Australand coming close to developing the building 2010.

Way back in 1992, a Korean developer bought the hotel for $23.8 million.