Housebuilder pays €40m for prime south Dublin site

Irish housebuilder Cairn Homes has paid in excess of €40 million for a housing site in the south Dublin suburb of Rathgar only days after raising €400 million in equity capital in its new debut on the London Stock Exchange.

Cairn’s decision to pay more than €10 million above the guide price to secure the grounds of the Redemptorist Order on Orwell Road will be seen as a clear signal that top prices are again available for well located housing sites in the south Dublin suburbs.

There were around nine bidders in all for the Marianella seminary, church and grounds which extend to 3.28 hectares (8.11 acres) and are expected to accommodate around 280 homes, most of them apartments. It is the largest and best located site to have come on the market in over a decade in the leafy Dublin 6 suburb of Rathgar where houses in the long established redbrick estates have always been eagerly sought after.

Monastery

Cairn is the first Irish homebuilder to float on the stock market since McInerney Holdings in 1997. The launch of the new company coincides with the planned sale by receivers of several provincial housing sites owned by McInerney’s. Cairn was founded last year by Scottish accountant Alan McIntosh and

Michael Stanley

of the well known Stanley housebuilding family once associated with

Shannon Homes

. The new company is chaired by former

KBC Bank Ireland

chief

John Reynolds

.

Cairn is already working on a number of housing projects in Dublin, Cork, Galway and county Meath.

The Redemptorists, who have been based at Marianella since 1919, announced in 2007 that they planned to sell part of the grounds and build a smaller monastery on site. The plan was subsequently scrapped because of a fall-off in vocations and the fact that the Irish community now has only 12 members.

The order plans to use the money from the sale to promote the work of the Redemptorists in Ireland and also to support their missions overseas, especially in Mozambique.

There are two entrances to Marianella, one of them a gate lodge which is the only building listed for preservation. The grounds adjoin St Luke’s Hospital which may eventually be closed down. The St John of God Hospital is located along another frontage.

When the Redemptorists previously moved to offload the campus, they secured planning approval until November 2017 for a mixed development of apartments and houses. The scheme was to have included 12 five-bedroom semi-detached houses and 199 apartments, most of them two- and three-bedroom homes.

There was also provision for a crèche and 303 car parking spaces. More than a quarter of the overall site (0.92 hectares/2.28 acres) was set aside for a monastery but with that facility no longer required, Cairn Homes will be free to adopt an entirely different approach.