The Sandyford Industrial Estate was owned and opened by the then Dublin County Council in the 1960s and 1970s, but the council began selling off the freeholds on individual sites by the early 1970s. In those days, the sites might have been worth tens of thousands of pounds, but now land at the industrial estate is worth close to £1.5 million per acre. The old four-acre Alert Packaging site, with an estimated value of £7m, was part exchanged in a deal with Green Property Company which is currently building a large office development on the site. Green is to hand over 30,000 sq ft of offices valued at over £3 million to Alert as part of the deal. Early this year John Ronan, Richard Barrett and David Arnold spent £10 million for the old seven-acre Allegro site at Sandyford, and more recently, the 20-acre Legionaries of Christ site just down Leopardstown Road from the Sandyford Industrial Estate was sold for £25 million.

All of these sites are being developed for modern office accommodation, targeted towards the £15 to £17 per sq ft range. This is very competitive compared with the £25 to £30 that can be got for prime office accommodation in central Dublin, but is nonetheless streets ahead of what is being achieved for light industrial or warehousing space at Sandyford.

As warehousing, an owner might expect £6 or £7 per sq ft, far below office accommodation rates. It is this disparity of returns that is encouraging owners to sell off their holdings to developers and build anew in much cheaper locations in west Dublin. The developers can justify the high land costs by building multi-storey office accommodation, planning for which seems to be readily available at Sandyford.

As there is a current shortfall of over one million sq ft on the office market, developers can be confident of lettings. The ESRI suggests that the market will grow by about five per cent over the next three to four years, sufficient to gobble up any space that becomes available. The old Leopardstown Road running from the estate towards Sandyford village is like an old country lane, barely wide enough to accommodate two cars: but the segment of Leopardstown Road that will link the estate to the section of the M50 being built about a quarter mile away is to be turned into a dual carriageway, and this should help.

The long awaited LUAS will run to Sandyford Industrial Estate, and this will give a transport option to commuters working at the new office parks.