A partially built retail and apartment site at Lower George’s Street in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, is to be offered for sale from today at a knock-down price after the project ran into financial difficulties. Wesley Rothwell of CBRE is seeking €1.75 million for the substantial complex which is being sold on the instructions of a receiver.
Bank of Scotland (Ireland) is understood to have been owed around €25 million at the end of 2008 when it appointed Jim Hamilton of BDO Xavier Simpson as receiver to the Wexford-based Tuskar Residential Investment Properties (TRIP). Work on the redevelopment of the former Iceland supermarket site began in 2007 and had been brought to shell condition on the third and fourth floors when TRIP was put into receivership.
The planning permission, which runs until the end of 2017, provides for an eight-storey over basement block to include two retail units on the ground floor extending to 323sq m (3,627sq ft), 83 apartments and basement car-parking. The 0.35 hectare (0.87 of an acre) site has almost equal frontage on to Lower George’s Street and George’s Place.
In demand
Well located modern apartments sold exceptionally well in Dún Laoghaire until the property crash with most of them being acquired either by families trading down or investors anxious to cash in on the buoyant letting market. Only five of the apartments planned for the Iceland site are one-bedroom units with the remainder either two or three-bedroom homes.
Several blocks of completed apartments in the Dublin area have been sold over the past two years to overseas investment groups who will continue to rent them until the market recovers when they will have the option of either retaining or selling them at a profit.
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