Just one week after it announced its intention to seek 62 redundancies from its Irish business and the reorganisation of its operations due to increased levels of remote working, PayPal has instructed agent CBRE to find a buyer for its main office campus in Blanchardstown, Dublin 15. The Campus at Ballycoolin Business Park is being offered to market at a guide price of €26 million.
The subject property extends across a total area of 8.37 hectares (20.7 acres), and consists of four separate buildings extending to 170,854sq ft. The selling agent expects the sale of the scheme to attract interest from investors, developers and potential owner-occupiers, given the flexibility of the buildings.
The Campus is split into two distinctive sites. The larger site area to the west of the main Ballycoolin estate road extends to 5.7 hectares (14.1 acres), and consists of three interlinked office buildings covering a combined area of 142,606sq ft.
Two of these buildings recently underwent an extensive refurbishment, and benefit from best-in-class specification with an expansive, naturally-lit feature atrium. This site consists of the main car park with 591 car parking spaces, along with a large area of land providing development potential for an incoming purchaser, subject to planning permission.
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The smaller site area to the east of the main estate road, meanwhile, extends to 2.67 hectares (6.6 acres) and consists of a former commercial building (28,248sq ft) which has been converted to a high-quality office. There is car parking to the front and 5.1 acres of greenfield zoned land to the northern boundary of this site. Significantly, the Campus is zoned ‘HT’ (High Technology), which offers the potential for an alternative commercial use such as a data centre or life sciences facility, subject to planning permission.
Ballycoolin Business Park is one of Ireland’s most established business parks. The scheme is home to a number of major occupiers including eBay, Kepple Data Centres, K2 Data Centres and Veritas. The park is strategically located 16km northwest of Dublin city centre, and is within 5km of the M50/N2 (junction 5), which provides rapid motorway access to all of the main routes from Dublin.
Commenting on the sale of the Campus at Ballycoolin, Garrett McClean, executive director at CBRE, said: “The Campus represents a superb opportunity to acquire a substantial portfolio of four buildings. Buildings 2, 4 and 5 were fully refurbished to a very high turn-key standard at a cost of approximately €15 million between 2019 and 2021. Given the quality and strategic location of this portfolio, the competitive guide, along which the obvious development potential, we’re expecting strong demand from investors, developers and occupiers from across multiple sectors.”
PayPal’s decision to dispose of its Blanchardstown base comes as part of the company’s decision to consolidate its office-based operations. As well as seeking 62 redundancies – a reduction of roughly 3 per cent of its Irish workforce of 2,100 – the company is closing its Dundalk office.
Those staff in Dundalk who remain with the US payments company will work remotely, while the firm’s Dublin-based employees will move from Ballycoolin to a smaller office in the city centre that “better meets the needs of its workforce”.
“Ways of working at PayPal, as at many other companies, have completely transformed over the last three years,” Maeve Dorman, senior vice-president at PayPal, said last week.
“Employees, including myself, have really embraced the flexibility of our new working models and the increased opportunity to work from home. As a result, employee footfall at our offices at Dublin and Dundalk has remained consistently low. Nonetheless, we have maintained our strong community connections and supports in these regions, and will continue to do so.”
The Irish job cuts and office closures come after PayPal said at the end of January that it planned to shed 2,000 jobs, or 7 per cent of its global workforce.
The payments company will still employ around 2,000 staff in the Republic once the job cuts are complete, and has said it remains committed to Ireland. PayPal joins other tech giants such as Meta, Google and Amazon in reducing staff numbers in recent times.
