Receiver to sell former club on the Green

The building that once housed the Hibernian United Services Club may end up as a shop for American fashion retailer Abercrombie and Fitch

THE FORMER Hibernian United Services Club at 8 St Stephen’s Green in Dublin 2 may be converted into a store when it is sold on the instructions of a receiver.

The large Georgian building, between Top Shop and the St Stephen’s Green Club, has been remodelled and modernised in recent years.

A number of estate agents and potential purchasers have been shown through the premises in the past fortnight by joint selling agents DTZ Sherry FitzGerald and Kelly Walsh who will be hoping to offload it for anything between €15 and €20 million.

The former gentleman’s club was bought for €10 million in 2002 by the businessman Hugh O’Regan who is thought to have spent almost as much again on refurbishing it.

His plan was to re-open it as a private club for “young and emerging businessmen and women”.

That ambition ended last August when the State-owned Anglo Irish Bank sought the repayment of loans totalling almost €27 million secured on two properties – a vacant building on Parliament Street in Dublin (once home to the city’s oldest shop) and the former Hibernian United Services Club.

The receiver, Martin Ferris, is handling the sale of the club which is held by one of O’Regan’s companies, Clubko.

American fashion retailer Abercrombie and Fitch, which has been looking for a suitably stylish building in Dublin since earlier this year, is likely to be one of the fashion giants looking at the St Stephen’s Green venue which has an overall floor area of around 2,600sq m (28,000sq ft).

It has about 929sq m (10,000sq ft) of space suitable for retailing on the ground and first floors.

There is separate external access to the basement which has been fitted out as a restaurant complete with kitchen and toilets.

Alternatively, the basement could easily be converted to retail use.

The two top floors have been converted into eight en suite bedrooms but, here again, they could be used as offices or storage.

The likelihood is that the former club will be bought by an investor and leased out as both a restaurant and a fashion store.

A new lift was recently installed in the building which backs on to the Royal Automobile Club on Dawson Street.

A receiver has also been appointed to another O’Regan company, Dashaven, which was redeveloping the Kilternan Hotel and Sports Club in south Co Dublin with borrowings of €171.5 million from Irish Nationwide.

He acquired what was then known as the Kilternan Golf and Country Club for €12.7 million in 2001.

O’Regan assembled about 330 acres of land adjoining it with the intention of turning it into an extensive resort with a 129-bedroom hotel, music studios, organic restaurants, a leisure and golf club, swimming pool and a 74-unit apartment hotel.

The project is now 90 per cent complete and is likely to cost at least €10 million to finish.

The borrowings associated with it are classed as development and, because of their size, may be moved first into the State’s “bad bank” Nama.