Dunnes pays £15 million for anchor store in Swords

The competition between the supermarket chains for new shopping facilities in the greater Dublin area moved a stage further this week when Dunnes Stores concluded a deal to open a major store at the town centre being built in Swords.

Dunnes was in competition with Tesco and Safeway for the anchor store, which will have 80,000 sq. ft of space on two levels. The ground floor will be used as a supermarket while the upper floor will trade as a department store.

Dunnes is thought to be paying close to £15 million - the equivalent of less than £200 per sq. ft - for the store, which will be the centre-piece of a £40 million complex. Development work has already begun on The Pavilions, a regional shopping centre which will begin trading in the run-up to Christmas, 2000.

The decision by the Irish multiple to open one of its largest outlets in Swords will strengthen the appeal of the centre. Superquinn has a large supermarket beside the proposed centre and will obviously want to protect its market share in one of the fastest-growing urban centres in the country. Hundreds of new houses have been completed close to Swords in recent years and many more are planned following the recent rezoning of additional lands.

Dublin developers Flynn & O'Flaherty originally secured planning permission for The Pavilions almost two years ago, but subsequently opted to modify the layout with the intention of giving it the edge over other suburban shopping centres in north Dublin. Designed by O Muiri Smyth, the centre will have a total of 250,000 sq. ft of retail space and a multi-storey car-park. Apart from the anchor tenant, there will also be two other stores with 25,000 sq. ft each and between 40 and 50 shop units. The overall plan provides for a new system of pedestrian walks linking the existing town centre with a civic square which will house a variety of leisure, recreation, office and shopping facilities, as well as a six-screen cinema.

Larry Brennan, of Hamilton Osborne King, says the provision of open walkways and a civic square would maintain the vibrancy of the town centre and greatly expand the existing town facilities.

Flynn & O'Flaherty has yet to finalise plans for the second stage of the project, but it is likely to include a large hotel and other commercial buildings. The 23acre site, located between Main Street and the Swords by-pass, was bought at auction almost five years ago for £3.2 million - a fraction of the current value. Meanwhile, Tesco is expected to proceed with its plans for new stand-alone shopping facilities at Liffey Valley and another site at Airfield, Malahide, Co. Dublin, despite a ban on superstores of more than 37,675 sq. ft in the Dublin region. The recent announcement of a revised set of policy guidelines on retail developments will force Tesco to scrap its plans for a number of out-of-town hyper-markets.

The new Government guidelines are to be given statutory effect in a planning Bill due to be published within months. Although there is now a virtual embargo on large new shopping centres linked to the motorway network, exceptions are to be made in a small number of cases.

The Strategic Planning Guidelines have proposed further retail development at a limited number of existing nodes within built-up areas such as Blackrock, Bray, Dundrum and Dun Laoghaire. Tesco will be the anchor in the new Dundrum Shopping Centre and has also targeted another strategically located site in south Dublin for a retail centre.