A BRANCH of the upmarket London cafe-restaurant the Wolseley is set to be opened in the former Habitat furniture store on Dublin’s College Green, pending the outcome of talks between the restaurateurs and the building’s owners.
A spokeswoman for the Piccadilly restaurant yesterday confirmed that it was in negotiations to open in the Dublin city-centre location, which had previously been earmarked for a branch of the German low-cost supermarket Lidl.
Pixtell Ltd, a company owned by developers Paddy McKillen and Tony Leonard, was earlier this year granted permission by Dublin City Council to change the building from a retail premises to a licensed restaurant.
In it application Pixtell said it wanted to open a “Viennese-style” cafe in the building which was formerly a branch of the Bank of Ireland.
The Wolseley, owned by Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who previously owned the Ivy and Le Caprice, describes itself as a cafe-restaurant “in the grand European tradition”.
McKillen and Leonard bought the College Green building in 2002 for €22 million, before leasing it to Habitat.
The upmarket furniture store closed last May following what it described as a severe deterioration in sales.
Habitat had hoped to sell on its lease, and Lidl was among a small number of parties who expressed an interest in the site.
However, the supermarket chain was reportedly unwilling to pay the €2 million, reduced from an initial €3 million, sought by Habitat.
The lease was then returned to the developers who have said that they intend to restore as much of the original fabric of the mid-19th-century building as possible.
It is not yet known when negotiations with the Wolseley will be completed and the developers could not be contacted for comment yesterday.
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