Just over five months after they agreed the sale for several hundred million euro of a majority stake in the Dean Hotel Group, a portfolio of eight hotels within their wider Press Up Hospitality Group empire, developer Paddy McKillen jnr and Matt Ryan have instructed agent CBRE to find a buyer for three of their best-known Dublin pubs.
The sale of Ashton’s in Clonskeagh, Dublin 6, Thomas Rody Maher’s (formerly Larry Murphys) on Baggot Street, Dublin 2, and The Foxhunter in Lucan, Co Dublin, is expected to see strong interest from both publicans and investors. The portfolio is being offered to the market at an overall guide price of €13.5 million. The venues are also being made available for sale individually at guide prices of €4.75 million for Ashton’s, €3.5 million for Thomas Rody Maher’s, and €5.25 million for the Foxhunter (including an adjacent development site). All three pubs have undergone careful restoration works by the current owners’ development company, Oakmount, as part of McKillen jnr and Ryan’s plan to acquire, refurbish and sell them once the business of each was back up and running.
Acquired by Oakmount from a group of private investors for €3 million in 2022, Ashton’s occupies a high-profile trading location on Clonskeagh Road, close to the Beech Hill office complex and UCD’s main campus at Belfield. Before the purchase of the premises’ freehold by McKillen jnr and Ryan, the south Dublin landmark had been leased for a decade by Ronan Kinsella and Paul Lenehan, who also own and operate Hartes of Kildare in Kildare town and the Dew Drop Inn, in Kill, Co Kildare. During that time, Kinsella and Lenehan acquired a restaurant licence for the premises and invested in a new patio and terrace area. The pub has benefited from further capital investment under Oakmount’s ownership and offers the incoming purchaser the potential to increase revenue both from the venue’s existing customer base and from its development potential. Ashton’s is the subject of a planning application for the addition of boutique-hotel accommodation over three floors of a five-storey extension to the existing pub premises.
Having paid about €1.7 million to secure ownership of the then Larry Murphy’s pub in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, McKillen jnr and Ryan set about transforming the Baggot Street landmark into Thomas Rody Maher’s. Today the pub occupies a prime trading location within a short walk of the new headquarters of the Department of Health at Miesian Plaza, the new headquarters of the ESB at Fitzwilliam 28, and LinkedIn’s new EMEA headquarters at Wilton Park. Apart from potential offered by the pub itself, the incoming purchaser will be in line for additional rental income from the property’s upper floors (the third-floor office tenant will be unaffected by the sale).
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McKillen jnr and Ryan acquired the Foxhunter and its adjoining site for €3 million in 2019. While that price represented a relative bargain compared to the €17 million the property had last sold for in 2007, the pair’s original plan to develop a 161-unit Build-to-Rent apartment scheme on the pub’s adjacent 0.49-hectare (1.21-acre) site was roundly rejected by An Bord Pleanála in 2022. The site still offers significant potential for development according to the selling agent and is available for sale with the Foxhunter or separately.
The Foxhunter has undergone a substantial refurbishment under the current owners, having lain dormant for almost a decade after it closed in 2012. There is an opportunity for the purchaser to agree a franchise of the pub’s existing food and beverage operations, trading as Elephant & Castle and Wowburger.
John Hughes, who is handling the sale of the three pubs on behalf of CBRE says: “The sale of Ashton’s, Thomas Rody Maher’s and The Foxhunter offers an excellent opportunity for existing publicans and investors to acquire, collectively or individually, three landmark premises presented in turnkey condition and benefiting from development potential in each of their locations. The Foxhunter site will also appeal to developers who will consider its zoning and planning potential.”
