Central Bank signs contract for Anglo Irish site

The Central Bank of Ireland has signed contracts with Nama and the receiver of developer Liam Carroll’s North Quay Investments Ltd to purchase a site on North Wall Quay, in Dublin’s Docklands, for €7 million.

The site of just over 1 hectare (2.4 acres) was previously earmarked for a future headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank and contains an unfinished office block, which had become a totem for the bust of Ireland’s property bubble.

As previously announced last May, the Central Bank intends to complete the construction of the existing building on the site, with modifications, and to relocate to it as its headquarters. The purchase works out at €686 per sq metre.

In response to queries from The Irish Times, which revealed that the Central Bank was considering purchase of the site, a spokesman said the bank was now in the process of completing the procurement of a design team.

The spokesman said this process was expected to be concluded by the end of 2012. “As the Central Bank is a body governed by public law, the ‘restricted procedure’ was utilised to undertake this competition,” he added.

Since 1980, the bank has had its headquarters on Dame Street in a building that caused considerable controversy when it was under construction. But many of its staff of 1,500 are operating from office blocks on Harcourt Road and Spencer Dock.

The Anglo shell on North Wall Quay, when completed, would provide 21,400 sq metres (230,350 sq ft) of office space for all of its staff, apart from those employed at the Currency Centre in Sandyford, Co Dublin.