Green light for €50m scheme on Pembroke Street

THE FORMER offices of the Commissioners of Irish Lights at Lower Pembroke Street in Dublin 2 is to be redeveloped and enlarged to include a large office building and two spacious penthouse apartments with an end value of around €50 million.

Pembroke Partnership, a company controlled by Gerry Deane and Paddy Fitzgerald who bought the old building for €26 million in 2006, have just received planning permission for four floors of offices with an internal area of 4,218sq m (45,000sq ft), 22 car-parking spaces and two penthouses, each with floor areas of 230sq m (2,500sq ft).

The upper floors will offer excellent views of much of the south inner city.

The planners have stipulated that the façade of the old building should be retained.

The four floors of offices, due to be ready for fit-out by mid 2010, will range in size from 603 to 743sq m (6,500 to 8,000sq ft) and will be available for sale or to let on a floor-by-floor basis.

Aidan Hora of selling agent Finnegan Menton said they felt that many mid-sized professional practices and corporates had left the Fitzwilliam Square area in recent years because of the absence of high quality, modern freehold options.

For example, solicitors Mason Hayes+Curran and Lavelle Coleman, as well as AON Insurance, Bank of Ireland Private and An Bord Altranais had all moved from interconnecting Georgian buildings to new modern space in places such as the docklands.

Although the agent has not yet set a rental or a selling price for the building, modern office in the south inner city generally sells for around €1,300 to €1,400 per sq m (€13,993 to €15,069 per sq m).