‘Sale terms agreed’ for €4.5m Cork city quays site

A prime one-acre Cork City quayside site that went to ‘best and final bids’ last week is understood to have sale terms agreed in excess of its €4.5m price, with the intending buyer’s identity as yet unconfirmed.

Listed in late summer with agents CBRE was a one-acre former warehouse site on St Patrick’s Quay. It was previously controlled by developer Paul Kenny/The Kenny Group, with protected stone and brick facades.

It was pitched as having potential for high-density residential/apartments development, hotel, or offices, and it’s understood that a number of bids were made, primarily from Munster parties and with a strong residential bias.

St Patrick’s Quay, with the rear of The Metropole Hotel, Cork , the Mary Elmes Bridge, Penrose Wharf and Penrose Dock (under construction) all visible. Pic; Larry Cummins

New apartment construction is advancing to the east of this St Patrick’s Quay site at Horgan’s Quay, under the auspices of the LDA, along with BAM/Clarendon Group, who also developed offices by Kent Railway Station, with Apple as office key tenant, as well as the Dean Hotel, among other occupants and mixed uses. 

St Patrick’s Quay district Cork circa 1918

Offices in between at Penrose Quay have also been completed by JCD Group, with a JCD interest in an adjacent as-yet undeveloped site close by.

Meanwhile, full planning has just been granted in late October for a new Premier Inn hotel across from this former Kenny site at Brian Boru St on the Coliseum/Leisureplex site, with work expected to start early next year, after the grant of a revised planning permission for a 174-bed hotel. The Coliseum half-acre site sold for a recorded €5.5m to the Whitbred Group, owners of Premier Inn in 2024. Premier opened their €30m, 187-bed hotel on Morrison’s Island two years ago.

Premier Inn site on left, CBRE-offered site on right

CBRE had put this one-acre, profile quay site next to Penrose Wharf, between the bus station and rail station, and used in recent decades for surface-level car parking, for sale on behalf of receiver Declan Taite, of Kroll, acting for a fund.

Previous owner Paul Kenny had secured approval in the early- to mid-2000s for a 130,000 sq ft office scheme — at the time, optimistically titled Treasury House, when he competed to relocate the Revenue Commissioners from their historic premises on Sullivan’s Quay.

Vacant: Sullivan’s Quay site

In the event, BAM got that deal, Revenue went to new offices in Blackpool, on Assumption Rd, and their former Sullivan’s Quay site remains undeveloped.

Pitching to investors and developers, CBRE had described this St Patrick’s Quay/Treasure House acre site as a “high-profile development opportunity in a most desirable location” and said that, given its scale and prime location, it was well-suited to a wide variety of potential uses, expecting interest from local, domestic, and international parties, “particularly those focused on delivering much-needed housing in Cork city”.

CBRE Cork agent Denis O’Donoghue declined to comment on the likely purchaser’s identity, after what’s believed to have been a second round of offers, pending signing of contracts.

The acre site faces toward the stalled Port of Cork, 34-storey tower site and towards Anderson’s Quay, where O’Callaghan Properties put the former CSPCA/Reliance Bearings 0.48-acre site up for sale last year, for €4.25m, and where it’s understood that hotel/corporate apartments were mooted by an overseas investor, but that deal has not progressed.