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”
[…] Top price Celtic Tiger Residence Comes Onto The Market With 85% Discount (NamaWineLake) […]
Property Week say that Ballymore are selling their Baltimore Wharf (twisty tower) development in the London Docklands
spiker
@jp Any more info on baltimore i note its subscriber only.
The expiration of planning raises an interesting point in that all development land/projects that has been transferred into NAMA will presumably expire in the next 18 months or so (with 5 year planning). I suspect that the planning period may be extended as a new permission will require application under the new apartment size regulations which will require bigger apartments.
The project would probably stack up with a sales price of about EUR 350 per sq ft (based on a EUR 5M site value) but the average size of the units at 2,400 sq ft would require an EUR 850K unit sale price and hard to know who would want to fork out that.
@Barry, I think that’s the point, it doesn’t stack up and that is evidenced by the Hollybrook apartments which are offered at less than €250 psf.
http://www.daft.ie/searchsale.daft?id=663735
This is a cash market and while the aspiration of a €5 million sales price might be reached in a competitive bank supported economy with an active mortgage market, it is highly unlikely to be achieved here.
23 Savile Row was in NAMA
@Katherine, indeed that’s possible but do you have a source or a link?
NAMA’s Graham Emmet said it was at a presentation in London last year.