Former Woodies site sold for €20m to developer Bernard McNamara at height of Celtic Tiger era
A range of parties including developers, institutional investors and the Land Development Agency may be interested in the opportunity presented by the sale of a 1.19-hectare (2.94-acre) site at Tallaght Town Centre in Tallaght, Dublin 24.
Located immediately adjacent to The Square shopping centre and within a short walk of both Tallaght University Hospital and TUD’s Tallaght campus, the former Woodies site has full planning permission for a residential-led mixed-use scheme and is being offered to the market by agent Hooke & MacDonald at a guide price of €5.9 million.
The disposal of the property is being conducted on the instructions of John Healy and Myles Kirby of Kroll joint receivers over certain assets of Ravensbrook Ltd, a company headed by Siobhán Quinlan, a property investor and the wife of financier Derek Quinlan, John Gordon, with an address in Monaco, and Michael Quinlan, with an address in Castleknock.
While Ravensbrook’s directors had been seeking originally to develop as many as 326 apartments on the site, that plan never came to fruition. The receivers commissioned a planning application earlier this year, and in May secured permission on appeal from An Coimisiún Pleanála for the development of 199 apartments along with 17 commercial units and a 58-space basement car park.
The residential accommodation is to be distributed across two blocks of up to seven storeys in height. Block A includes 49 senior-living apartments and communal amenity facilities, while Block B comprises 150 apartments. The approved units comprise a mix of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments.
The approved commercial accommodation consists of 17 units with a combined area of 2,123sq m (22,851sq ft) which would be suitable for healthcare, retail, cafe, pharmacy, childcare and neighbourhood service uses.
The site’s €5.9 million guide price represents just a fraction of the €20 million that developer Bernard McNamara paid for it at the height of the Celtic Tiger era. McNamara’s company, Laytar, acquired the property from a group of investors assembled at the time by Derek Quinlan. A plan to develop 350 apartments on the site never materialised and the property was put back on the market in 2016 for €4.5 million.
Commenting on the site’s arrival to the market now, Donald McDonald of Hooke & MacDonald said: “Belgard Square East represents a rare opportunity to acquire a fully permitted mixed-use development site of scale in one of Dublin’s most important town centre locations.
“With planning permission in place for 199 apartments, commercial accommodation and a highly accessible location beside The Square shopping centre and the Luas, we expect strong interest from developers, investors and housing providers.”