Beauparc Utilities founder closing in on €19m deal for Chancery building in Dublin city centre

Sretaw PE (Private Equity), the investment and property development company headed up by Eamon Waters, is understood to be closing in on the acquisition of the Chancery building in Dublin city centre for about €19 million.

Should a deal proceed at that level, it would equate to a discount of 23 per cent on the €24.75 million price that had been guided by agent Knight Frank when it brought the property to the market on behalf of its owner, Credit Suisse, in September last year. The proposed price is some 20 per cent lower than the €23.8 million Credit Suisse paid Hibernia Reit to secure ownership of the property in 2017. Both Sretaw and Knight Frank declined to comment on the proposed deal when contacted by The Irish Times.

The Chancery building, built in 2005, comprises a six-storey over-basement office and residential development on Chancery Lane in Dublin 8. The office element of the scheme extends to 3,185sq m (34,283sq ft) with secure basement car parking for 19 cars and further parking for bicycles.

There is a separate entrance to the adjoining Chancery apartments, which lead to the main ground-floor entrance hall. The apartment block is four storeys high with one unit per floor. All four apartments are two-bedroom units and extend to 76sq m (818sq ft) each.

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The offices are fully let to three tenants and are producing total rental income of €1,396,693 annually. Of the current rent roll, 69 per cent is being generated by State tenants.

The ground floor is let to Wella Studio, a leading hairdressing-training company that forms part of the wider Geneva-based Wella Company, which is 75 per cent-owned by US headquartered private equity giant KKR.

The first to fourth floors are let to the Office of Public Works and are occupied by the Chief State’s Solicitors Office (CSSO), which has 250 staff working across various legal and administrative roles.

The penthouse floor is occupied by Analytic Partners, a privately held firm specialising in analytic solutions. The company has partnered with large global brands such as Microsoft, Snapchat, Google Measurement Partner, Facebook Marketing Partner, Amazon Advertising and TikTok for Business.

The four apartments are fully let to private residential tenants on a mix of rolling “Part 4″ and fixed-term tenancies. The rent roll of the residential units equates to €98,928 annually.

The Chancery building comes with planning permission to extend the floor area of the office accommodation by 914sq m (9,838sq ft) and, with a full Ber assessment aimed at bringing the property to an overall B2 rating, its proximity to the Sretaw-owned Grafton Hotel may well fuel speculation that its new owner could look to redevelop it as a hotel at some point in the future.

In July, the Sretaw Hotel Group sought planning permission from Dublin City Council for a new 61-bedroom hotel on the site of Textile House, which Mr Waters bought last year after it was put on the market for €6.5 million. The building sits across the road from the Grafton Hotel on Johnson’s Place and Clarendon Market.

The news of Sretaw’s move to buy the Chancery building follows its acquisition from Iput earlier this year of Victoria’s Secret’s flagship shop on Grafton Street along with Tesco’s premises on Lower Baggot Street for €28 million and €12 million respectively.

In September 2021, Mr Waters’s company paid €74 million to secure ownership of Royal Hibernian Way on Dublin’s Dawson Street from Aviva Investors.

That deal came just weeks after he and US private equity firm Blackstone secured the sale for €1.4 billion of the State’s largest waste company, Beauparc Utilities, to Australian financial services giant Macquarie. The deal for the company, which owns the Panda and Greenstar waste firms in Ireland, is understood to have provided its founder, Mr Waters, with a windfall of about €367 million, based on company filings before the announcement.