DUNLOE House is planning to develop a £10 million shopping centre and retail warehouse complex on the edge of Sligo town. The move comes in the same week that Dunloe paid £9 million for The Mill shopping centre and two development sites in Clondalkin, Dublin 22. Dunloe has paid close to £1 million for a 20-acre site near the Sligo Park Hotel at Carraroe, on the southern end of the town. The local authority is to be asked to rezone the site for commercial use. A new ring road planned for the town is to run through part of the land. Discussions to sell the anchor store of 50,000 square feet to a major supermarket multiple are already well advanced. The centre will have a total of 150,000 square feet of retail space and a number of free-standing retail warehouses.

Dunloe's acquisition of the two-year-old Clondalkin shopping centre from Jim Mansfield took the investment market by surprise. Dunnes Stores owns the 50,000-square-foot anchor store but the remaining shops, which cover around the same area, are producing a rent roll of £750,000. Dunloe will probably add a further 10,000 to 15,000 square feet of retail space and sell off some of the units shops to investors.

The package bought by the company also includes a three-acre site with planning permission for 46,000 square feet of offices. Dunloe has pre-sold 20,000 square feet of space and is in talks to dispose of another 15,000 square feet. The deal also covered a one-acre residential site with planning permission for 24 apartments. On the basis of the rent roll and the profit expected from both development sites, Dunloe will probably end up with a yield of over 10 per cent on the transaction.