The Irish-owned telecoms company, Conduit, is to be the anchor tenant in the 11-acre extension to East Point, the high-tech office park in the Dublin docklands. Conduit is to occupy a 42,000 sq ft building, which is due to be completed next June. The company will be paying a rent of £16 per sq ft for the four-storey block, which will enable the company to provide a directory assistance service for one of its new customers, Orange, the UK telecoms company. The deal means that the promoters can maintain their record of having pre-let all the buildings in East Point over the past four years. All 24 buildings with a total of 750,000 sq ft were committed before they were ready for occupation in the first phase of the park. Because of the enormous success of the park, the developers are also proceeding with the construction of two other blocks which will be ready for occupation in September and October of next year.
The three buildings will form part of a 400,000 sq ft extension to the park which already has 750,000 sq ft of buildings completed and occupied mainly by computer software and related companies, both Irish and international. The present workforce of around 5,000 is due to rise to 7,000 when the extension is completed within two years. The first phase of the park was developed by Earlsfort Developments, then headed by the late Dermot Pierce. The land for the next phase has been made available by the Dublin Port and Docks Board, which will have a 50 per cent stake in remainder of the park, an enterprise with a projected end value of around £100 million.
From the start, East Point has been particularly successful in attracting leading technology operators, including Eircom, Oracle, AOL/Bertlesmann, Kindle Banking, Quintiles, Compaq and Sun Microsystems. Conor Kevany of agents Palmer McCormack said the occupiers were frequently attracted by the choice of four telecommunications providers, a choice unavailable in any other business park in Ireland. They would also have access in the near future to broadband fibre optic links to the US, Britain and Europe. East Point and City West have been identified as the probable locations for the "carrier hotel" which will handle broadband service.
East Point's success was also greatly helped by the availability of enterprise area tax breaks, under which the investors acquiring buildings could claim 50 per cent capital allowances while tenants could avail of double rent allowances and a remission of rates over 10 years.
Though the tax incentives are no longer on the table, the developers can still get rents of £16 per sq ft because of the sharp increase in rents throughout Dublin. East Point will continue to have the attraction of a DART station at Fairview, which is just one stop from the city centre. In addition to Palmer McCormack, the other agents are Hamilton Osborne King and Jones Lang LaSalle.
