Top price Celtic Tiger residence comes onto the market with 85% discount

It was the top price residence sold in 2006 at €31m, and today it on the market with an asking price of just €5m. Gortanore, the 2,500 sq ft house on 3 acres of prime development land in upmarket Foxrock, south Dublin was bought by David Arnold’s D2 in 2006 and was the €31m was the top price paid for a residence in that year. Like that other white elephant, the €58m Sean Dunne-associated Walford on Shrewsbury Road, the purchase of Gortanore was followed  by a fraught planning application, fiercely opposed by locals. Eventually permission was granted for the demolition of the house and the construction of a mixed use development with  37-apartment, shops, office space with 90 car-parking spaces.

O’Mahony Pike, the architects for the scheme, had attracted criticism from Foxrock residents who said that the design was out of keeping with the Edwardian style that made up the original neighbourhood.

The plans were met by 52 local objections. Despite this, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council granted permission to demolish the house and outbuildings and build 37 apartments in three blocks with a gym and conference room, shops and commercial space at street level, and 90 car-parking spaces, 84 of which are at basement level. The apartments, on the edge of Foxrock village, are 1,800-3,000sq ft  in size and are designed to have a full-time concierge. A development of apartments with similar aspirations was built close-by by Sean Dunne at Hollybrook, also on Brighton Road.

Industry sources suggest the existing plans are unbuildable in the current climate, and that the permission will, in any event, presumably expire next year.

Loans on some of David Arnold’s property did get acquired by NAMA, for example One Warrington Place in Dublin 2 which went on to be NAMA’s first staple finance sale. Loans on other properties stayed with the original lender, for example the Woolgate Exchange in London whose cGBP300m sale recently fell through and No 23 Saville Row in London’s West End, the sale of which for GBP 210m (€270m) was announced by UK commercial property portal CoStar.co.uk today.

The joint agents for Gortanore are Jones Lang LaSalle (listing and brochure here) and local agent Daphne L Kaye (listing here). The current €5m asking price was originally on the latter agent’s listing but this has since been removed and replaced with “price on application”