Landmark Dublin 4 hotel offers scope for high-end redevelopment at €12.5m

The sale of the former Hampton Hotel in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, is expected to see interest from a broad range of parties, including luxury-hotel operators and developers involved in the delivery of accommodation for the prime owner-occupier and residential-rental market.

Having closed its doors for the final time last April, the hotel known to generations of Dubliners and visitors alike by its previous name, Sachs, is being offered to the market by agent Colliers at a guide price of €12.5 million.

The hotel occupies a high-profile location on Morehampton Road, the main thoroughfare between Donnybrook village and Dublin’s south city centre. The RDS, Aviva Stadium and St Stephen’s Green are all within a 10- to 15-minute walk of the property.

The original hotel buildings comprise six terraced Georgian houses with a distinctive Regency feel. The period buildings currently house 29 en-suite bedrooms, including three large suites, the hotel’s reception area along with a large bar/restaurant. The hotel’s two-storey extension was constructed in the 1980s and comprises a function room and six additional bedrooms on the lower ground floor in the area occupied for many years by the Raffles and Vanilla nightclubs.

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The hotel sits on a 0.83-acre site with an outdoor-dining area and parking for 16 cars to the front of the hotel and a large secure service yard with the option of additional residents’ car parking to the rear.

John Fleming Architects have completed a feasibility study which assumes the new owner will seek permission to renovate and extend the existing property. In this scenario, the architects suggest there is scope for the development of a four-star, 121-bedroom hotel with restaurant, bar and dining areas. The architects have also looked at alternative development scenarios, and these include a 131-bedroom apart hotel and a residential scheme comprising 59 apartments.

The Hampton Hotel is being sold on behalf of Crofter Properties* following the recent surrender of its lease by the estate of the late Philip Smyth, who died in 2019. The move is significant given the decades-long feud that the Longford-born tycoon had engaged in with Crofter Properties’ previous owner, Hugh Tunney, the Tyrone-born beef baron, before their respective deaths. While the two men agreed a lease on the Dublin 4 property in 1978, that deal spawned a succession of court proceedings that continued right until the end of 2007. Smyth ultimately managed to withstand Tunney’s best efforts to remove his company, Genport, as tenant and maintained the hotel as part of his wider business empire, which included the Westwood chain of gyms and the well-known Blinkers (Club 92) nightclub in Leopardstown Racecourse.

Commenting on the sale of the Hampton Hotel, Richard Bielenberg and Patrick Ryan of Colliers say: “This is a fantastic opportunity to redevelop and expand an iconic Dublin hotel. Its 35 bedrooms should drive solid, immediate income for the new owner while planning consent is being sought and secured.”

*This article was amended to correct an error