The long-awaited and much-debated redevelopment of the site of the former Ormond Hotel on Dublin’s Ormond Quay Upper may have moved a step closer following the property’s sale to a group of Irish investors.
Having paid about €2.5 million to developer Bernard McNamara in 2013 to secure ownership of the Victorian-era hotel, which features in “the Sirens” chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Malaysian-based Monteco Holdings has sold the site in an off-market transaction brokered by agent CBRE for about €12 million. While the figure is a multiple of the price Monteco paid for the property, it is still far short of the €17 million McNamara splashed out on the hotel’s purchase a year after its closure, in 2006. The developer put it back on the market in 2009 shortly after his various businesses began to experience financial difficulty, with an asking price of €7m, but it failed to sell.
It remains unclear whether the Ormond Hotel site’s new owners, who are understood to be experienced hotel developers, will pursue the development of the hotel for which Monteco finally secured planning permission in 2017 or submit a new planning application of their own.
The current planning consent provides for the development of a 120-bedroom hotel, along with food, beverage and meeting facilities distributed across 5,850sq m (62,970sq ft) over seven floors.
Commenting on the completion of the Ormond Hotel site’s sale, Alexandra Sheeran of CBRE’s hotels division said: “This transaction marks a significant milestone and we look forward to seeing the positive impact the new hotel will bring to this prominent riverside site and the future development of the area.”