Neville Isdell, the Down-born former Coca Cola chief executive, was back in Dublin yesterday to give a speech at the opening of 8,000sq ft of event space for start-up nursery Dogpatch Labs in the vaults below his CHQ riverside mall.

He told our reporter there he considers himself the “most unusual landlord in Dublin”. Achievement for him, he said, is when tenants move out. Isdell, explained start-ups move in to CHQ when they are small but there is only space for them to grow so big. They have to move on as they succeed in getting bigger.

Plans are also afoot to build a diaspora museum in the CHQ vaults, while the mall upstairs is buzzing during the day with an influx of suited types from the nearby IFSC.

As the retail economy refloats, the €10 million paid by Isdell for CHQ is starting to look like a snip.