M1 Business Park carries knockdown €6.15m tag

A superbly located business park on either side of the M1 motorway near Balbriggan, Co Dublin, which failed to take off during the property boom, is to be offered for sale at a knockdown price.

Brendan Smyth of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald is quoting €6.15 million for 63.72 hectares (157 acres) of undeveloped land at the M1 Business Park and the freehold interest in a further 9.13 hectares (22.56 acres) where a number of companies are based including Kube Kitchens, Murdock Builders Merchants and Ace Express Freight.

Treasury Holdings owned the park during the property boom but failed to capitalise on its strategic location at Junction 5 of the motorway where it has both north and south access and similar egress on to the motorway.

The park was included in the large portfolio of properties put into receivership when the Treasury Holdings company run by Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett was wound up in October 2012. The joint receivers for the business park are William O'Riordan and Declan McDonald of PwC.

The sale of the park comes just as Dublin Port has indicated that it has a requirement for a 50-acre park close to the city.

Brendan Smyth says the M1 Business Park is within eight minutes drive of Dublin Airport and has direct access to the docklands through the port tunnel whereas most of the traditional parks based along the N7 (Dublin-Naas motorway) have to pay additional fees in both directions on the congested M50.

Similarly with 75 per cent of all goods imported through Dublin Port destined for an area within 80km the presence of an interchange along the M1 motorway site providing north/south access created a perfect logistics hub.

The 157 acres now becoming available are to be offered for sale in their entirety or in six different lots with a variety of zonings. Only one parcel of land extending to 6.6 hectares (16 acres) does not carry any zoning.

The zonings on the other lots include general employment and light industry, high technology, research and development, training centre, enterprise centre and petrol station.

Previous planning permissions on the site which have now lapsed include light industrial and warehousing development totalling 86,778sq m and nine similar building extending to 31,212sq m.

This permission also included a hotel even though that market is already catered for by nearby Citynorth hotel built by developer Sean Reilly.

Brendan Smyth, who is handling the sale along with Johnny Hanrahan of DTZ, said he expects the flexibility being offered in terms of multiple lots will attract both developers and owner-occupiers to the process with a number of off-market proposals having been made in recent weeks.