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  • Dunloe's plan for major development may yet get thumbs up

    Dunloe Ewart's proposed major retail, residential and leisure regeneration scheme for the Royal Avenue end of Belfast city centre may still receive approval, according to local agents. Industry sources expect the Northern Assembly will support the proposed Multi Development Corporation's (MDC) mixed retail, hotel and leisure development.
LICENSED PREMISES

  • Quinn Group puts three pubs up for sale

    The Quinn Group is planning to capitalise on high pub prices in Dublin by selling three of its 11 city bars. The sale forms part of a review of the company's investment strategy, given its medium-term plan to seek a public flotation. John Ryan of Gunne Commercial is to auction the three Dublin bars on August 3rd. The Coal Porter, in Rathmines, is expected to make around £3.5 million; The Station, on Rathmines Road has a guide price of £2.5 million while The Birds Nest in Glasnevin is likely to make in excess of £2.5 million.
TRENDSBack to Top

  • Banks cut back on lending due to fears of overheating

    Irish banks have cut-back on their lending to developers for speculative commercial property schemes because of fears of overheating in the property market generally. The principal lenders to the property industry have been under pressure from the Central Bank, which has expressed its fears over the high level of lending to the industry and the threat to the banking system in the event of an economic downturn.
BAKERYBack to Top

  • Bretzel could be tasty proposition

    One of the oldest bakeries in Dublin, Bretzel, on Lennox Street, Dublin 8, - well known for its exotic breads and pastries and with a long history as a Kosher bakery - is on the market through McPeake Auctioneers. The agents are quoting a guide price of £800,000 for the three-storey building which is being sold as a going concern.
IN BRIEFBack to Top

  • Fashion chain pays £500,000 for Grafton Street shop lease

    An Irish fashion chain is paying slightly over £500,000 for the leasehold interest in the EBS branch office which has closed down at Grafton Street, in Dublin 2. More than a dozen retailers, many of them from the UK, were in competition for the store, which is located along a particularly busy stretch near the top of the street. The shop has a narrow frontage and 800 sq ft of retail space. There is a further 500 sq ft of storage space in the basement. The building is rented at £83,000 per annum with the next review due at the end of 2001. The next tenant is likely to remodel the shopfront.

  • £2m-plus sought for Malahide commercial development

    Agents Harrington Bannon are seeking offers in excess of £2 million for a commercial property with development opportunities at The Diamond in Malahide, Co Dublin. The property includes a pharmacy, a jewellery retail unit and a first-floor medical centre, which are producing rents of £45,000. There is also a development site of over 3,000 sq ft with access from New Street.

  • Jeweller selling Henry Street shop leasehold for £150,000

    UK jeweller H Samuel is selling the lease of its store at 34 Henry Street in advance of its relocation to the former Sports Division unit at the junction of Henry Street and Liffey Street. The company will be paying a rent of £170,000 for the three-storey building. Lambert Smith Hampton is seeking a premium of £150,000 for the existing store, which has 950 sq ft at street level and 740 sq ft on the first floor. There are also stores on three levels. The current rent is £125,000. Druker Fanning handled the disposal of the Sports Division shop.

  • SCR office development will be renting out at £20 a sq ft

    The Cosgrave Group is well on the way to completing a new office development, SCR House, at South Circular Road in Kilmainham, Dublin 8. The 20,000 sq ft building forms part of a larger scheme, which also includes 100 apartments. The three-storey building is close to St James's Hospital and is due to be completed by next September. Nicholas Corson, of Finnegan Menton, is quoting a rent of £20 per sq ft for the building, which has floor plate sizes of 6,663 sq ft. The block is being fitted out to a particularly high specification and will have air-conditioning, raised floors, a suspended ceiling and high-quality light fittings.

  • Galway hotel and apartment scheme gets the thumbs down

    An Bord Pleanala has over-ruled Galway Corporation's decision to grant Kenny Developments planning permission for a 127-bedroom hotel, 24 apartments, leisure centre and convenience store on a 5.25-acre site opposite Dunnes Stores, at Headford Road, in Galway. The board said the discrepancies and lack of clarity in the documentation did not enable the appeal to be adequately assessed.

  • £500,000 expected for Leixlip commercial unit

    Coonan Auctioneers expect to secure in excess of £500,000 for a large commercial property at Main Street, Leixlip, Co Kildare. The three-storey building has a floor area of 4,200 sq ft, including two retail units and offices on the upper floors. The building is vacant with the exception of one of the retail units.

  • Pan-European internet portal for commercial property

    Three leading international property service firms, CB Richard Ellis (operating as CB Hillier Parker in the UK), DTZ and Jones Lang LaSalle are forming a joint venture company with international business publisher Reed Business Information to develop the first pan-European commercial property listings, information and data research portal for the property industry in Europe. The longer-term objective is to develop it into a leading transactions exchange that will set the industry standard for the commercial property market. The first phase of the development will include the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain.

  • Extensions for Dublin 4 office building allowed

    Dublin Corporation has granted planning permission for extensions and alterations to the existing office building at 27/33 Upper Baggot Street and Flemings Place, Dublin 4. The scheme will involve the development of over 74,000 sq ft of new space in an eight-storey block on Flemings Way. It will also involve extensions to two floors of St Martin's House on Waterloo Road.

  • Salvation Army building has 10,000-year restriction on pub

    Immoral, illegal, and pub uses are banned for 10,000 years under the tenure conditions on the sale of the former Salvation Army Citadel building on Belfast's Dublin Road, which is being offered for sale by tender by agents Brown McConnell Clark. In keeping with the anti-alcohol and clean-living philosophy of the Salvation Army, the tenure conditions attached to the 10,000-year-lease state include: "Prohibiting use for the sale only of alcohol, ie, pub or off-licence. Any immoral or illegal purposes."

  • Biggest pub in the North has 25,000 sq ft and £3m price tag

    A short distance away from The Citadel site, the biggest pub in Northern Ireland has been brought to the market by the Whelan Partnership, the licensed specialists, who are quoting a guideline price of £3 million sterling. Franklin Gate, on the corner of Franklin Street and Brunswick Street, was developed in a former Victorian warehouse just over two years ago by a local consortium and consists of three bars and a nightclub, with a total floor space of over 25,000 sq ft.

  • Former garage site near City Hall with planning makes £5m

    Lambert Smith Hampton has achieved close to the asking price of £5 million for the 1.1-acre former Charles Hurst garage site, just south of City Hall in Belfast's principal office area. The site in Adelaide Street is within the Linenhall Conservation Area. It has planning permission for either 185,000 sq ft of office accommodation or for 160 apartments. A local development company, which is expected to submit a fresh planning application for a courtyard office development, hotel and car-parking facilities, has bought the site.

  • Castle Lane retail investment and offices sold for about £4m

    Belfast agents Campbell Cairns are understood to have agreed terms for 7-11 Castle Lane, one of the few prime retail investments to come on the market in the city in the past year. They had been quoting £4 million sterling. The property is on the primary shopping spur between Donegall Place and Arthur Square. It is situated beside retailers, including Bhs, River Island, Top Man, H Samuel, Sports Division, Carphone Warehouse and Clinton Cards. The property is divided into three retail units with office accommodation overhead. The ground floor retail units are between 810 sq ft and 1,375 sq ft. The total rental income is put at £337,000, with Zone A rental rates estimated at £175 per sq ft. The first and second floor office accommodation is estimated at £5 per sq ft.

  • Prudential takes 20,000 sq ft of offices at Capital House

    Lisney in Belfast has recently let 20,000 sq ft of space to Prudential at Capital House, the 1970s office building in Queen Street, which has been refurbished by Deramore, a local developer. It is understood Lisney achieved around £12 sterling per sq ft, which is close to current top rental rates in the city. Capital House has 65,000 sq ft of accommodation and the Prudential letting means that only 10,000 sq ft remains unlet after a marketing campaign of only two months.

  • Boucher Retail Park sells for £8m

    A local developer has paid £8 million sterling for the Boucher Retail Park on an eight-acre site in south Belfast beside the M1 motorway, making it the largest retail investment deal this year. Gavin Morgan, of agents Insignia Richard Ellis Gunne, who acted for the purchasers, pointed out that the Boucher Retail Park is surrounded by highly successful retail warehousing with excellent investment growth potential. The vendor was Town Centre Securities of Leeds, which was represented by Gee & Co of Glasgow. The net initial yield for the property is approximately 7 per cent.

  • Two of North's best-known pubs and a hotel change hands

    The Whelan Partnership, which specialises in licensed premises, has sold two of the North's best-known pubs, which have been released to the market by Guinness's Northern Ireland pub-owning group, Croft Inns. The Shaftsbury Inn, on the Antrim Road, is the biggest pub in the north of the city and is set on the slopes of Cave Hill with views over Belfast Lough. It has 5,000 sq ft of floor space and a large car-park. The other pub is the Homestead, at Drumbo, set in the rolling countryside to the south of the city. The Homestead is the oldest coach-house in the North and is popular with clientele from Upper Malone to Lisburn. Whelans did not release the details of the sales and offers, which were by way of sealed bids.

  • Refurbished York Street offices partially let

    The Brown McConnell Clark agency has let 6,750 sq ft of space in a refurbished 1970s office building, just off Belfast city centre, at a reported rental level of £6.50 sterling a sq ft. Flagship Media Group has taken the letting in Numbers 48-50 York Street, just to the north of the city centre. The company also has an option on the remaining 3,375 sq ft of space in the building.

  • 30-acre Ballyclare industrial site selling at £130,000 an acre

    Agents Brown McConnell Clark are quoting £130,000 sterling an acre for a 30-acre industrial development site with planning consent at Ballyclare, Co Antrim. The land is situated within a short distance of the main Belfast to Larne road and M2 motorway. Outline planning exists for a major warehouse and distribution facility.
BLOOD BANKBack to Top

  • Blood donation clinic planning move to city centre

    The Blood Transfusion Services Board, currently at the centre of the haemophilia tribunal, is moving its donor clinic to an office overlooking O'Connell Bridge in Dublin as part of a radical review of its facilities. The board is also switching the remainder of its operations from Pelican House, at Mespil Road, in Ballsbridge, to a new building nearing completion in the grounds of St James Hospital.
MOTOR DEALERSHIPSBack to Top

  • Continued boom in car sales prompts major dealer upgrades

    Hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent in upgrading and redeveloping Irish motor dealerships as the boom in new car sales continues. New car registrations this year are likely to exceed 250,000 - up from 174,182 last year, which was itself a record. The previous year, 1989, the figure was 145,717 which was also a record.
BELFASTBack to Top

  • Real prospects for growth as agents see a boom on the Belfast horizon

    The Belfast office market is facing a boom in the form of accommodation requirements for the new devolved government and large office relocations in the city centre due to the development of a new retail and leisure complex by MDC, the major Dutch developers. Belfast has only recently begun to see speculative office building and improved up-take in the past 18 months. Top rental levels in a small number of offices have only recently reached £14 sterling per sq ft. This compares with Dublin's top rents of around £35 per sq ft.
REDEVELOPMENTBack to Top

  • Record rent of over £1.5m likely at former C&A site

    Hamilton Osborne King in Belfast has been retained as letting agents for the former C&A department store site, which holds a key position in Donegall Place, Belfast's primary shopping street. The building was undergoing redevelopment when C&A's owners, the Brenninkmeyer family, decided to close all 109 of their British and Irish stores. It has since been demolished and the site excavated to make a new basement level. It is beside Marks & Spencer on the busiest stretch of Donegall Place.
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