DevelopmentLand: Developers looking for new retail opportunities have been increasingly focusing on Navan in the expectation that the proposed M3 motorway link to Dublin will free it from its present traffic chaos, reports Jack Fagan

With that prospect in sight, a local landowner is to offer for sale a site of 10.648 acres zoned for retail warehousing close to the planned Navan slip road off the M3.

Joint agents Hamilton Osborne King and Smith Harrington are quoting in excess of €600,000 per acre for the site which goes to tender on April 21st.

It adjoins 23 acres, also recently zoned for retail warehousing, which were bought last year for €20.32 million by a consortium of Lagan Developments and Fyffes.

This group has sought planning permission for 13,935 sq m (150,000 sq ft) of retail warehousing which will be in direct competition with a retail park planned for the old Navan Carpets site on the Kells Road.

The Lagan/Fyffes group got permission for a new shopping centre at The Ramparts in Dundalk and subsequently sold on the 26-acre site to the Northern Ireland developer for €28 million.

The Navan Development Plan 2003 provided for a gateway retail park off the M3 which might also include a cinema, drive-through restaurants, leisure uses and shopping.

Navan is also to get a new town centre shopping facility off the Trim Road to cater for an expected growth in population of up to 60,000 by 2016.

Dublin-based developer Bernard McNamara paid over €23 million last October for a site of 7.4 acres which has been newly rezoned for town centre use.

The owners of Navan Shopping Centre already control a major portion of the rezoned land which has four road frontages including a section opening on to the Trim Road.