ONE OF THE poshest firms on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green is up in arms at the thought of the latest tenant due to move in next door.
Imagine the consternation in fine art auctioneers and valuers James Adam & Sons when it discovered this week that its neighbour will be none other than a discount store. The new mega Euro Giant is moving into the former Compustore which has been vacant for an unbelievable period of almost seven years.
The letting was brokered by another blue-blood firm, Lisney, which happens to have its front office and headquarters on the other side of the new bargain shop. So it too will have easy access to cut-price pink plastic watches, fake flowers, cheap mugs and Leprechaun hats.
“Business is business,” according to one Lisney executive.
Chief executive Peter Stapleton said he was glad to see an occupier moving in after such a long period. “Occupiers bring life to the building and life to the street . . . that’s what we want.”
The former computer store is exceptionally large, extending to 250sq m (2,700sq ft) and will have a second entrance on to Kildare Street, making it handy for civil servants and guests of the Shelbourne Hotel on the opposite side of the road.
Adams was kept in blissful ignorance about the opening of the discount shop. Managing director James O’Halloran said it was “entirely inappropriate” for this type of business to open along the most prominent stretch of St Stephen’s Green.
“It beggars belief that they would open in an area where there are mainly high-end business services such as the restaurants and one of the best hotels in the city.”
But no doubt the owners of the building, Irish Life, and lessees Friends First, were feeling the seven-year itch and were only too delighted to get anyone at all to move in, in the current difficult market. The reality is that discount shops are thriving throughout the country but are mainly found in secondary streets and shopping centres where they can avail of heavily discounted rents. After the St Stephen’s Green opening we might see more of them popping up in the most unlikely locations.
