Housing Land: A site leased by the OPW made more than double the guide price. Jack Fagan, Property Editor, reports
Dublin housebuilder Ellier Developments is to pay €22.5 million for a leasehold apartment site of almost one acre held by the Office of Public Works at Lad Lane in Dublin 2.
The unexpectedly high selling price and the fact that several under-bidders were only marginally lower has taken the OPW by surprise, as its selling agents, Hamilton Osborne King, had initially quoted a guide price of only €10 million.
Francis Rhatigan and Chris Jones are the principals in Ellier, which has been one of the most successful housebuilders in the Dublin area in recent years.
It is understood that two of the other 14 developers who tendered for Lad Lane also offered in the region of €22 million but had stipulated that the freehold should first be acquired from Pembroke Estates. The OPW obviously decided not to go down this road again having spent the best part of a year in a failed attempt to acquire the freehold. Pembroke Estates is believed to have been one of the underbidders for the lease, which has another 92 years to run.
Sources in the OPW suggested yesterday that had they managed to acquire the freehold interest before putting the site on the market, a sale by auction would have had even more builders chasing it and as a result it could have made over €30 million.
Ellier will obviously attempt to acquire the freehold or negotiate some form of agreement with Pembroke on the development of the site. The alternative is a long drawn out legal battle.
The fact that 15 developers tendered for the site despite the fact that there is still unfinished business over the freehold interest underlines the serious scarcity of sites in the south inner city.
Two other residential sites off Morehampton Road in Donnybrook, also sold in recent years, must now seem extremely good value.
Galway-based developer Gerry Barrett has already secured planning permission for a mixture of houses and apartments in the grounds of the former Quaker hospital while Brian Cullen's Jackson Properties is seeking planning permission for 196 apartments and townhouses on a 3.6-acre site at the rear of Sachs Hotel, which it bought for €25 million.
One of the difficulties for developers pitching for the Lad Lane site was the uncertainty about the number of apartments likely to be allowed by the city planners. Pat Nolan of HOK said the most common "bankable figure" mentioned by many of those tendering for the site was 130 units but he believed that a higher figure could be achieved if an imaginative, high quality scheme was produced by a top architectural firm.
The rectangular-shaped corner site measures 0.96 of an acre and has extensive frontages on to both Lad Lane and Pembroke Row. Apart from these two frontages, the site is bounded to the west by the seven-storey high Wilton House offices and by the five-storey Wilton Court apartments and multi-store.
