Irish investors plan €250 million London scheme

OVERSEAS INVESTMENTS:THREE IRISH property investors have lodged a planning application for a new hotel, two cinemas and an apartment development on a key site at Leicester Square in the West End of London.

The scheme is expected to have an end value of around £200 million (€250.5 million) when it is completed early in 2011.

Limerick-based property adviser Pat Chesser - along with developers Pat Whelan and Paul Hanby - first acquired the well-known Odeon West End Cinema on Leinster Square more than two years ago after paying £28 million for it.

The group has since spent almost the same amount again acquiring most of the remaining block, covering an area of 0.36 of an acre and bounded by Leicester Square, Panton Street, Whitcomb Street, Orange Street and St Martin's Street.

The development site does not include the Radisson Pastoria Hotel or a small vacant site on the corner of Orange Street and St Martin's Street. However, it does include the building formerly occupied by Royal Bank of Scotland and Derwent Valley. The Irish syndicate was originally one of 14 bidders for the Odeon, which has been in business since the 1930s.

The syndicate has sought permission to demolish all buildings and to develop a new landmark project designed by architects Make to provide two cinemas with 660 seats at basement level, three restaurants on the ground floor, as well as an entrance to a 250-bedroom hotel which will occupy the first to fifth floors.

The next three floors will be given over to 33 apartments and the ninth floor will house a "sky restaurant" with superb views over much of the West End of the city. The Leicester Square Co-Ownership Group, representing the three investors, is in advanced discussions with a leading hotel chain to operate the hotel.

The planned redevelopment coincides with plans by the Westminster City Council to transform Leicester Square into the home of cinema in Britain. The council is due to invest heavily in improvements in the West End in the run up to the Olympic Games in 2012.

Apart from Leicester Square it is also intends to spruce up Oxford Street, Chinatown and Covent Garden as well as the surrounding theatre district.

Four years ago, Chesser and Whelan developed the landmark Clarion Hotel on the edge of the River Shannon in Limerick city.

Hanby was one of the founders of solicitors Hanby Wallace, which has advised some of the largest housebuilders in the country, including Castlethorn. In more recent years he has invested heavily in the property market and is also involved in the company that developed MacDonagh Junction shopping centre in Kilkenny.