€11.5m for Galway investment

JACK FAGAN

A high-profile retail, office and residential building overlooking Eyre Square in Galway city centre is to be offered for sale as an investment at more than €11.5 million through DTZ Sherry FitzGerald.

The hugely successful fashion discounter TK Maxx is anchoring the five-storey-over-basement Citypoint block which though only partially occupied is producing a rental income of just under €1 million.

Nama is understood to have prompted the sale of the five-year-old centre which was built by GK Developments.

Aidan Gavin of the selling agents said the complex – the second largest investment to come on the market in Galway city since the sale of the Edward Square shopping centre at the end of 2012 for €27.3million – would appeal to local interests as well as to national and international investors because of the strength of the anchor tenant, the prime location in the city and the established rental income.

Strategically located

Citypoint is strategically located close to

Bank of Ireland on Eyre Square and Corrib Shopping Centre anchored by Debenhams and Marks & Spencer.

TK Maxx is paying a rent of €800,000 for 3,994sq m (42,990sq ft) on part of the basement as well as the ground and first floors. The 20-year lease from 2009 is subject to upward-only rent reviews and includes a break in the 10th year.

Two other retail units at ground and basement levels with a total of 570sq m (6,125sq ft) are currently vacant and when let could be expected to bring in an additional €214,737, based on a rent of at least €376 per square metre (€35 per sq ft).

One of the office suites is let but two more on the second and third floors extending to 2,014sq m (21,678sq ft) are currently unused. The expectation is that they would rent at €129 per sq m (€12 per sq ft) and when tenants are finally found this will boost the overall rental income by a further €260,136.

Seventeen fully fitted apartments on the fourth and fifth floors are let to Western Hotel on a 10-year lease from January, 2013, at €149,400 per annum, subject to a break option in 2016. The rents work out at €8,764 per annum – well below the norm for the city centre.

Citypoint has three basement floors including space for 84 cars.

Forty of the spaces are producing a rental income of €37,491, leaving 45 further spaces for letting. The office and residential elements of the development can be access from Bóthar na mBan and Bóthar Irwan at the rear.