THE Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland is to lease the ABN Amro Bank building on St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, which it acquired earlier this year for £5 million as a long-term investment.
Finnegan Menton expects to secure a rent of between £18 and £20 per square foot for the building, which is one of the most distinctive on St Stephen's Green. It will be available from the middle of May when ABN Amro relocates to the International Financial Services Centre.
The building has 22,500 square feet of space on five floors over a basement car-park. About 3,000 square feet on the top floor is occupied by the Danish Embassy.
The block comes on the letting market at a time when there are virtually no office buildings of that size or quality available in the city centre after two of the most buoyant years on record in the sector.
In addition to buying the St Stephen's Green building, the RCSI is currently developing a 525-space multi-storey car-park at the rear of the college, which is likely to have a heavy demand because of its proximity to Grafton Street. The development, which will be completed later this year, will include five shops, seminar rooms and college apartments.
The area is also to receive a major boost from the development of a £10 million hotel, which is being built between the RCSI and the St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre. The Fitzwilliam Hotel Group is to operate the 130-bedroom hotel. Finnegan Menton advised the hotel group, which also owns the Royal Dublin and the Portmarnock Hotel and Country Club, Dublin, and the Metropole Hotel, Cork.
