Land BanksThe Odlum family, best known for flour and milling, is selling a substantial farm which is bisected by the recently upgraded Naas Road. Although not zoned for development, the land - about 8kms west of the M50 - has medium term potential, writes Jack Fagan

The wealthy Odlum family is to sell a substantial farm on both sides of the N7 Dublin-Naas road about 8kms west of the M50.

The 195 hectares (482 acres) at Quinsborough, Naas Road, Co Kildare, is not zoned for development but there is every possibility that at least some of it will be rezoned in the medium term.

Agent Hamilton Osborne King will be hoping to secure over €150,000 an acre for the land when it goes for sale this week by private treaty.

If that price level is achieved, it will equate to over €72 million for the Odlum family whose flour milling business is now owned on a 50-50 basis by Greencore and IAWS.

The land runs for about 1.5 miles along both sides of the dual carriageway which has just been upgraded to three lanes in both directions.

The long running road improvement scheme has also included the provision of two interchanges which provide easy access to the Odlum farm - the land on the northern side of the N7 has direct access to the Castlewarden interchange while the land on the southern side runs up to the Steelstown interchange.

The completion of both interchanges opens the way for business and industrial parks if the land is rezoned.

With Kildare County Council - like many other local authorities - under constant pressure to provide additional services for people moving into new houses in the county, the planners may well look on the Odlum land as a good opportunity to tap into a new source of revenue through commercial rates. About 50 acres is located within the area of South Dublin County Council while the remainder is in Co Kildare.

There will be no shortage of bidders for the land even though it is unzoned and unserviced.

Some of the existing business parks which have been highly successful in recent years will obviously be interested.

So, too, will two or three wealthy businessmen in west Dublin who have watched their property portfolios soar in value in recent years.

The rapid growth of business and industrial parks in west Dublin over the past 20 years - it now has the largest concentration of industrial buildings in the country - as well as along the M50, has pushed the price of zoned land to between €1 million and €2 million per acre.

Even at that value, many companies have found it difficult to find appropriate sites. The result is that there has been a strong demand for new office and industrial buildings which have been developed off the interchanges at Rathcoole, Naas and Newbridge.

The recent trend of redeveloping industrial parks in the city suburbs for high density office and apartment schemes has also forced companies to look for alternative accommodation further out of town. Last summer an industrial site of 15 acres at the Red Cow roundabout was acquired by agent HT Meagher O'Reilly for two Dublin property investors at a cost of €107 million.

Since then several other well located industrial parks have been looking at the feasibility of redeveloping warehouses for office and apartment schemes.

The joint agent is Jordan Auctioneers.