A MARKETING campaign gets under way today to find a tenant for a long vacant office building in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, which was sold for €46 million at the peak of the property boom in January 2007.
Despite its primary location opposite the former Jurys Hotel and the exceptionally strong price paid for it, seven of the eight floors in Carrisbrook House have remained unoccupied for almost five years. The remaining floor is rented by the Israeli Embassy.
The 42-year-old hexagonal block, now valued by one expert at no more than €10 million, was sold to developers Bernard McNamara, Gerry O’Reilly and David Courtney in a private tendering process at a time when they and several other developers were jockeying for stakes in the planned high rise redevelopment of the centre of Ballsbridge.
At the height of the buying frenzy, developer David Daly paid €25 million for Franklin House, a five-storey office block on 0.2 of an acre on Pembroke Road.
This equated to a value of €133 million an acre. Despite all the hullabaloo, the planners did not see merit in any of the high rise developments. By the end of 2008, the property market had collapsed, sending property values plummeting and the construction industry into oblivion.
Carrisbrook House is but one of the many casualties in Dublin 4. When it was sold for €46 million it was attracting rents of €377 per sq m (€35 per sq ft). It is available from today at €215 per sq m (€20 per sq ft) through agent GVA Donal O Buachalla.
The McNamara, O’Reilly, Courtney consortium was not the only unlucky one when it came to Carrisbrook House. The State agency Forfás has had to deal with almost as big a nightmare because it has been locked into a – wait for it – 65-year lease of the building since 1969.
Irrespective of whether the block is occupied or not, Forfás will have to pay an annual rent of at least €1.18 million until the year 2034. For a period, Forfás sublet some of the floors to AIB but the bank moved out around 2006 and apart from the Israeli Embassy, it has been empty ever since.
Though 35-year leases were quite common in the 1960s and 1970s, a 65-year lock-in was quite unusual. With office vacancy rates in the city now around 24 per cent, most tenants opt for no more than 15 year leases with break options every five years.
Fergal Burke of GVA Donal O Buachalla says the AIB fitout remains in situ in Carrisbrook House, providing a mix of open plan offices, private offices, meeting rooms and a canteen.
The building will be let on a floor-by-floor basis or in one lot of 2,521sq m (27,135sq ft).
Carrisbrook has an unusually large allocation of car parking spaces at basement and ground levels, 64 in all at an annual cost of €3,000 per space.
