DIY SPECIALIST Homebase is to anchor the planned new Navan Retail Park which has a target opening date of October 2008.

It will be the second retail park in the Co Meath town where the former Navan Carpets site has Woodies as anchor of a well laid out scheme. However, despite its superior location some of the units in the Blackwater Retail Park were slow to let and one remains empty, more than two years after the park opened.

The promoters of the new retail facility, Lagan Developments and Blackrock International Land, will be hoping to do better with the latest park which will be located along a new northern feeder road linking the town with the M3. The site is about a mile from the town square and a somewhat shorter drive from the existing Dublin-Cavan road. It is even closer to the Tara Mines site.

The planning permission provides for 13 retail warehousing buildings with a total floor area of 14,864sq m (160,000sq ft).

Homebase is understood to have secured favourable rental terms on its unit of 2,322sq m (25,000sq ft) and mezzanine of a further 929sq m (10,000sq ft). The remaining 12 stores will range in size from 696sq m (7,500sq ft) to 929sq m (10,000sq ft).

Joint agents, Loman Dempsey of Raymond Potterton, Navan, Colliers CRE Belfast and Colliers Jackson-Stops, Dublin, are quoting rents of €215 per sq m (€20 per sq ft) for the planned buildings. That rent is below the level recently achieved for two stores in Blackwater let to Right Price Tiles and Harry Corry.

Right Price Tiles paid €242 per sq m (€22.50 per sq ft) while Harry Corry agreed €263 per sq m (€24.50 per sq ft).

A rent of €269 per sq m (€25 per sq ft) is being sought for the remaining unit.