Dunloe Ewart has announced a joint venture agreement with Aer Rianta for the development of a £100 million (127 million) business park on an 80-acre site adjacent to Dublin Airport. It has also sold a further 60 acres beside the airport to Aer Rianta.
The airport authority already has a small business park at Shannon and is involved in a joint venture at Cork. It is providing 39 acres to the Dublin development; Dunloe Ewart is contributing the remainder. The development is located at Harristown and will have direct road access to the M50, 500 metres away at the Ballymun interchange. It is zoned industrial and the joint venture company - 50 per cent owned by each company - will be seeking planning permission from the Fingal County Council for a mixed development of warehouses and offices with a total of one million square feet. The £100 million is the estimated capital value of the completed development taking an average of £100 per square foot. The estimated annual rental income is between £8 million and £9 million. The planning application is expected to be submitted this spring.
Development could start by the end of the year and Dunloe said it already had expressions of interest from a number of potential occupiers.
The development will be financed by Dunloe and Aer Rianta together with bank funding. Mr Philip Byrne, Dunloe's managing director, said it would be Dunloe's intention to retain as much of the development as possible.
A spokesman for Aer Rianta said the development was "way down the line" and pointed to the review on Aer Rianta's options which is taking place. However, he stressed that Aer Rianta was "in the business of developing lands around the airport". Mr John Burke, Aer Rianta's chief executive, said the development "meets our planned operational requirements at Dublin Airport and also meets our business needs there". He also noted: "It is a very good example of the private and public sector working together." Aer Rianta developed its own business park at Shannon. It recently got its first tenant when Virgin Airlines took space for its reservations centre. The 50-acre site being developed at Cork is jointly owned with Omnistone, which is controlled by property developer Mr Jerry Wycherley. Aer Rianta is understood to have paid Dunloe around £80,000 per acre for the other 60-acre site, or a total of £4.8 million. This is the same price per acre Dunloe paid when it exercised an option to buy the 101-acre site.
