AN overseas consortium is to build a £20 million shopping village, aimed at tourists, at Goff's in Co Kildare, which it says will employ up to 400 people. The village will retail major international brands at hugely discounted prices.
The consortium hopes that the village, which will be completed by autumn 1998, will attract up to 1.3 million extra tourists to the area. A planning application for the scheme will be lodged with Kildare County Council today.
The project is being built by Irish International Tourist Outlets Ltd. Its British investors are Value Retail, an international property developer and Chelsea GAA which have developed the concept in the US.
The village, which will be located on the Naas Road, will feature 46 retail outlets, selling mainly clothing by leading manufacturers such as Versace, Polo Ralph Lauren, Fred Perry, Donna Karan and Moss Bros. The clothes will generally be last season's fashions, end of line or seconds.
Mr Christopher Harris, a director of Value Retail and Irish International Tourist Outlets Ltd, said yesterday the units would be leased to the manufacturers who must sell items at discounts ranging from 25 per cent to 70 per cent.
He said the items would not be available in conventional retail outlets and that the village would complement rather than compete with existing retail outlets. No major retailers have been signed up yet, but Mr Harris said he was confident this would not be a problem.
He said it was hoped that a number of Irish fashion houses would take units. The developers, who said they had neither sought nor received any grant aid, will charge tenants a basic rent and a percentage of their turnover.
Value Retail is currently developing similar outlets at Disneyland in Paris and outside Barcelona on the Cost a Brava. It has already developed one in Bicester - between London and Birmingham - which last year attracted three million visitors.
Mr Harris said the company had been seeking a site in Ireland for the past two years. Goff's is selling a 10-acre parcel of land for an undisclosed sum.
Mr Harris said the site had been chosen because research had shown that 50 per cent of all tourists pass through Kildare. Another reason, he said, was because Kildare is fashionable".
He said the village would be aimed at the impulse buyer, the family out for a day trip. The development at Bicestey in England, now attracts three million visitors a year and has created 600 jobs.
Mr Harris said the Kildare Development, to be known as the Kildare Tourist Outlet Village, will contribute around £5.2 million a year in wages and will be aimed at the year-round tourist market.
Mr Padraig O hUiginn, former secretary of the Department of the Taoiseach and now a director of Bord Failte, would also be a director of the company behind the project.
Goff representatives said yesterday that they had still not decided whether to proceed with a hotel, for which they previously received planning permission, but added that this project might provide the incentive to build it.
