Plans for super pub behind shop lease clause

The retail unit at the corner of Dawson Street and Duke Street is up for lease - again. Kenneally McAuliffe is offering the 1,235 sq ft unit at a current rent of £45,000 per annum on a 35-year lease, which began in 1986. Key money of £175,000 is also required. The property would seem to have everything going for it. Its location is good on a busy corner that is getting busier all the time with the increased activity on Dawson Street.

The shop itself is very attractive and bright, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing out on to both streets. It also has a modern-looking appearance with its mezzanine level and feature staircase.

But the most unusual feature about this city centre unit is the high and very unusual turnover of tenants. There are two very different reasons for this high turnover. One has got to do with the shop's role in the assembly of a large site for a super pub on Duke Street. The other has to do with an interesting restrictive user clause.

Property developer and owner of the Buttery Brasserie, John Foley, bought the building two years ago. He owns three other buildings on Duke Street and has secured planning permission for a 12,000 sq ft pub on the site. Assembling the large pub site meant moving or buying out some existing retail tenants and Mr Foley was aware that some tenants might prefer to move to an adjacent property on the street.

He felt that by buying the corner shop, he might have extra bargaining power when it came to moving around the Duke Street tenants. The protracted legal negotiations meant that from the time he bought the building two years ago, he could only give six-month leases to tenants.

This has meant that in the past two years 51c Dawson Street has been home to a trendy homeware shop and later to potter Louis Mulcahy. The negotiations came to a conclusion late last month, with none of the Duke Street tenants opting to move to the corner premises which has allowed Mr Foley to offer it for lease. Indeed one of the tenants, The Apollo Gallery, has decided to stay put and Mr Foley will now have to rework the plans to open around the gallery.

While Mr Foley has been using the shop for the past two years as a negotiation tool, previous tenants have had to deal with a restrictive user clause. Unusually, it specified that tenants would have to be fashion retailers. However, despite having some fashion retailers Dawson Street is not regarded as a strong fashion street. Aquascutum was perhaps the most high-profile tenant in the shop but it closed several years ago.

Jim Monaghan, who has three knitwear and fashion shops nearby, went for a creative interpretation of the restrictive clause when he took over the lease and opened Golfers, a shop selling golf clothes. The shop survived for two years but unsurprisingly it didn't work. Golfers on the lookout for specialist golfing clothing are notoriously loyal to their club shops for their sartorial requirements.

There is now the possibility of lifting the "fashion only" clause and Foley predicts that from the interest he has received in the unit, the new tenant is most likely to be a restaurant or coffee shop. He has also had strong interest from two UK hair salon chains but at the moment, as he says himself, he's open to suggestions.