EY Ireland has narrowed the search for its new Dublin headquarters down to two locations, one of which is situated just across the street from its existing offices at the Harcourt Centre on Harcourt Street.
The Big Four accounting and consulting firm set out last May to find about 200,000sq ft (18,580sq m) of space with a view to accommodating the growth of its Dublin-based workforce. The company currently occupies about 100,000sq ft (9,290sq m) in a cluster of offices at the Harcourt Centre, which it leases from the Kenny family’s Clancourt Group. That space gives it the capacity for up to 1,000 of the 4,800 people it employs across 10 offices in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. The company has plans to grow this number to at least 5,100.
Having drawn up a shortlist of four potential office locations last September, EY has reduced that list to two contenders. In the first instance, it is looking at the possibility of relocating to Harcourt Place, a new office scheme to be built by its current landlord, the Clancourt Group, on a 0.54-hectare (1.33-acre) site the developer has assembled at the intersection of Charlemont Street, Harcourt Road and South Richmond Street. The scheme is set to comprise 29,764sq m (320,377sq ft) of offices with just under 29,000sq m of this to be accommodated within a 10-storey block. While the development of Harcourt Place is only in its early stages, should EY choose to locate there, Clancourt could continue to accommodate the firm in its current offices even though that most of its current leases are due to expire in 2027.
EY’s other option, The Irish Times understands, is to move from its longstanding home on Harcourt Street altogether, and to relocate to Wilton Park, the 53,885sq m (580,000sq ft) office campus developed by Irish property company, Iput, at Wilton Place.The social media giant LinkedIn had committed immediately before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020 to occupying all four blocks at the scheme for its new EMEA campus on a 25-year term, but it scaled that plan back in October 2022, and decided instead to sublet or assign the leases on blocks Two and Three. Should EY decide to relocate to Wilton Park, these blocks extend to 12,444sq m and 12,816sq m (133,951sq ft and 137,951sq ft) respectively, for a total of 25,212sq m (271,382sq ft). Blocks Two and Three are held under eight separate leases and are capable of accommodating requirements from 11,300sq ft up to 270,000sq ft.
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In the early stages of its search for a new Dublin headquarters, EY is understood to have run the rule over potential moves to several other locations in the city including the Clancourt Group’s scheme at Four and Five Park Place, Camden Yard, the major mixed-use scheme being developed by Shane Whelan’s Westridge Real Estate on the old DIT Kevin Street site, and Marlet Property Group’s College Square development at the junction of Tara Street and Townsend Street.
