Dunloe Ewart is selling on 39 Corporation Street, a prime office investment in the Laganside area of Belfast. Less than two years after acquiring, refurbishing and successfully letting the entire 38,000 sq ft building, Dunloe Ewart expects to make a healthy profit on its investment. Selling agents Richard Ellis Gunne are seeking over £6.5 million for the property.
The building, formerly known as the Design Centre, was the first significant office development in the Laganside area but failed to attract a large single tenant.
It was acquired just under two years ago by Barry Gilligan, at about the same time as the merger was taking place between Ewart Plc and Dunloe. The property was refurbished, rebranded under 39 Corporation Street and last year was let to Northbrook, a subsidiary of the giant US technology group, All State. Northbrook took the entire lease at around £12 per sq ft, then a record rental for Belfast. The company has a software development centre in the office building.
The building is well situated for road links being close to the M2 Motorway junction with the West Link ring road. It is also only a few minutes' walk from the city centre and is close to the proposed Cathedral Quarter, which has been earmarked by the Laganside Corporation for cultural and leisure development.
The annual rental is £460,000 per annum and the asking price suggests a yield of 6.74 per cent.
Richard Ellis Gunne has also emerged as the agents for the 16-acre Sirocco Engineering Works site with 800 ft of river frontage directly across from the key Lanyon Place and Waterfront Hall centre in the Laganside. The Sirocco site has been quietly on the market in recent weeks and it is understood the agents are close to agreeing a deal. The agents refused to comment but industry sources in Belfast suggest a price in excess of £20 million being achieved. This would make Sirocco the biggest investment site sale in Belfast.
Sirocco has been on the site for 120 years and was once one of the world's largest extraction fan manufacturers supplying heavy industry with huge centrifugal fans. Sirocco fans cooled the engine rooms of the Titanic.
In more recent times the company, which was founded by the inventor Samuel Davidson, was taken over by the Scottish Howden group and more recently again by the Chart Plc group. The company is relocating its engineering works to an out-of-town site.
