A private Irish investor has paid a figure approaching €16 million for the home of the former Hibernian United Services Club at 8 St Stephen’s Green in Dublin city centre. The sale of the property comes just over three months after Oakmount, the company headed up by Paddy McKillen jnr and Matt Ryan, pulled back from a deal to acquire it for about €17 million.
While the duo had intended to buy number 8 as part of a wider bid to assemble a large site for a hotel to be operated as part of their Press Up Hospitality Group, it is understood their plan will now be confined to the redevelopment of UK fashion retailer Topshop’s former flagship premises at 6-7 St Stephen’s Green, which Oakmount purchased for €17 million in 2022. The property, which has lain largely dormant since the departure of Topshop, is set to come back into use shortly as the latest location for Irish flexible workspace provider Grafter.
The sale of number 8 meanwhile is understood to have been completed in recent weeks. The price achieved represents a discount of just over 25 per cent on the €20 million agent Cushman & Wakefield had been guiding when it first offered the property for sale in September of last year.
The building, widely acknowledged as one of Dublin’s finest Georgian properties, had until recently served as home to the Dublin headquarters of Axa subsidiary the XL Group. It comprises a substantial four-storey over-basement townhouse dating from about 1770. Occupied and owned originally for just under 25 years by Lord Mountgarret, it was acquired by the aforementioned Hibernian United Services Club in 1845 for use as a gentlemen’s club.
While the property was subject to successive Victorian remodelling, the quality of its original build and later modifications, and of its interior, are noted on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. The building is included on Dublin City Council’s Record of Protected Structures and is within a “zone of archaeological interest”.
In more recent times the property was acquired for €10 million at the height of the last boom by the late publican and hotelier Hugh O’Regan, a talented entrepreneur and business visionary. O’Regan spent nearly as much again on upgrading the building with a view to bringing it back into use as a club for “young and emerging businessmen and -women”. That ambition came to an end with the property crash. Number 8 was sold for €7.8 million to its most recent owners, the XL Group, in 2012 by receivers acting on behalf of the former Anglo Irish Bank.
The building underwent a big renovation in 2013, with the entire space being restored. Today, the property extends to a total of 2,640sq m (28,418sq ft) of lift-serviced space comprising open-plan and private office accommodation, along with a dedicated gym space, showers and a large outdoor terrace. These modern additions are complemented by the building’s original cornicing, sash windows and shutters, ornate fireplaces, exposed brickwork, stained glass and ceiling roses throughout.
