Developer Charles O’Reilly Hyland has paid about €9 million to secure ownership of a prime 0.12-hectare (0.3-acre) site with development potential in Dublin city centre.
Located immediately to the west of Camden Street, 12 Camden Row is bound on either side by the TUD Focas campus and Elliots Food Service cash-and-carry and is home currently to a 1,700sq m (18,299sq ft) building, which is occupied under a series of licence agreements. Taken together, these delivered a gross operating income of €704,122 in 2021 based on a current occupancy rate of 66 per cent. The site was offered to the market by agent Savills at a guide price of €9.5 million in May of last year.
The development potential of the site is framed by the Dublin City Development Plan 2016-2022. The property is located in an area zoned objective Z4: “To provide for and improve mixed-services facilities. Permissible uses include, but are not limited to, the development of an office, residential or hotel scheme.”
A feasibility study prepared in advance of the sale suggested the site could accommodate a new purpose-built office development of approximately 5,545sq m (59,686sq ft), extending to six floors over basement, subject to the necessary planning permission.
Sitting opposite the property is the former TUD Kevin Street campus, sold in 2019 to Westridge Real Estate. Construction began in 2021 on the site where the development will consist of 53,110sq m (571,671sq ft) of office accommodation in two 11-storey blocks alongside 299 apartments spread across three buildings of up to 14 storeys in height.
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O’Reilly Hyland Real Estate (ORHE), which is headed up by Mr O’Reilly Hyland and his son, Max, has been quite active over recent years, acquiring a number of properties and development sites in Dublin city centre, its surrounding suburbs, and in Greystones and Delgany in Co Wicklow. In 2021, the developer paid about €18 million for numbers 92 and 93 St Stephen’s Green where it has plans to deliver a 126-bedroom hotel, while in 2019 it paid in excess of €6.6 million for the former premises and site of the luxury car dealer Charles Hurst Premium in Goatstown. While the company is aiming to build student accommodation on the south Dublin site, it is close to completing two new-homes schemes on the lands it acquired in north Wicklow.
