Offers in excess of £10 million (#12.7m) are being sought for Dundalk Shopping Centre, which is to be sold by private treaty through Douglas Newman Good Commercial. Alternatively, the owners will consider bringing in a joint venture partner to help fund a £25 million (#31.7m) redevelopment of the complex.
The centre is currently producing a rental income of £763,000 (#968,810). The only unit vacant, a pub and restaurant, was bought by the owners to facilitate the upgrading.
The overall facility is owned by Wanze Properties (Ireland), a company controlled by developer Robert Neill, who acquired it along with shopping centres in Athlone and in Dublin in 1996 for a combined figure of under £8 million (#10.2m). Athlone was later sold on to one of the anchor tenants and Janelle in Finglas was acquired two years ago by Tesco, which is to spend £12 million redeveloping it.
Dundalk will need more than double that expenditure to increase the retail areas from almost 100,000 sq ft to nearly 280,000 sq ft. This will involve the demolition of the anchor stores currently occupied by Tesco supermarket, Tesco department store and Heatons department store. Planning permission was granted more than two years ago to add 20,750 sq ft of retailing but since then the owners have devised a more adventurous blueprint which is due to go before the planners soon. Apart from the additional retail space, this will involve the building of a 982-space multi-storey car-park and 63,000 sq ft of offices and showrooms on an adjoining site owned by Wanze Properties.
Investors will be aware that a planning application for a rival shopping centre a short distance away has been lodged by the McCann family of Fyffe and the Lagan Group. Another shopping complex, The Long Walk, opened in the town a few years ago and even though Penneys switched to it, it has had little effect on the older centre. However, with the two shopping centres and Carroll's Village - another retail complex - competing strongly with traders in the town centre, it is questionable whether yet another shopping centre would be in the best interests of the town.
Tesco's 10-year lease of the supermarket and department store in the town's older centre, at a combined rent of £269,000 (#341,560), runs until September 2005. Heatons took a 25-year lease of the other anchor at a current rent of £50,000 (#63,487) per annum. There are 21 shops at ground floor level and 13 on the first floor. With on-street parking charges now being implemented in Dundalk, the agents estimate that car-parking at the shopping centre would bring in about £100,000 per annum.
