A new plan to develop a 211-bedroom hotel on the former Jury's Hotel site – significantly larger than the initial proposed development – has been lodged with Dublin City Council.
Chartered Land, the development partner of the wider site which used to house both Jury's and the Clyde Court Hotel, are amending plans approved in 2011 by An Bord Pleanála. That permission allowed a 152-bedroom hotel in one of the twelve blocks being built on the site. The new proposal would mean the hotel is both larger and in a different block to the original development approved by the board.
“Working within the existing permission, this hotel will be relocated into a second building to create a larger hotel opportunity, appealing to the Irish and international market,” a Chartered Land spokeswoman said.
The site in question was bought by bankrupt developer Sean Dunne at the peak of Ireland's property boom for €380 million. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority are the financial backers to the current project on the site home to the Ballsbridge Hotel. That hotel is currently operated by hotel group Dalata.
Dalata has a lease agreement on the hotel up to at least the end of October with an option, at the discretion of the site owner, to extend up to the end of March 2019.
It’s understood the hotel group has no involvement in the current planning application or development of a new hotel on the site. A spokeswoman for the company said “they are committed to the site under the current lease and can’t comment on any future involvement at this stage.”
Less lavish
The new 11,127sq m hotel will be, if approved, slightly less lavish than the previous proposal with leisure and spa facilities stripped out and retail units now not part of the hotel building itself.
The new hotel will have a reception area, administration area, a café/bar, a kitchen and storage area at ground floor level.
As a result of the increased size of the hotel the site owners, an Irish Collective Asset-Management Vehicle (ICAV), have made some alterations placing restaurants and retail units in different blocks than had originally been planned.
An ICAV is a corporate vehicle designed for Irish investment funds authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland. It is particularly useful for US investors in investment funds as it allows them to be subject to US tax as if they held the underlying assets in the fund directly.
Directors of the ICAV behind the Ballsbridge site – Copper Bridge C2015 – include Roderick Ryan, a former managing partner of Arthur Anderson in Ireland, and Robin Potter Cogan, a director of Davy real estate.
Shifting the hotel from one block to another also means that block eight will lose 12 properties and will reduce to a 56 unit building while block ten will also lose 12 properties to become a 133 unit building.
The proposed amendments to the site would increase the floor area of the development above ground by almost 643sq m.
The decision to increase the number of bedrooms in the hotel comes amid growing demand for tourist accommodation. In Dublin alone revenue per available room, a key metric in the hotel industry incorporating both room rates and occupancy rates, increased 5.4 per cent in January, according to Davy stockbrokers.
