On the face of it, the 11-acre extension to East Point business park is a small but more evolved imitation of the original 27-acre park. Some of the tenants already have offices in phase one, such as Sun Microsystems and Oracle, which has four buildings and Eircom which has two blocks in phase one and is looking at a third in the extension.
The buildings in the new phase are similar in concept to the earlier models but have more glazing, expansive atriums that maximise light and come with air conditioning as standard.
There is one fundamental change however. The investors who own these new buildings have a very different profile to those of phase one. The lack of tax incentives this time around means that the private investors who dominated the original park have now been usurped by institutional investors like Salix (Bank of Ireland Pension Fund), IPFPUT (Irish Pension Fund Property Unit Trust) and Irish Life. Another difference is that the extension is a joint venture between Earlsfort Centre Developments and Dublin Port.
There are nine buildings and 500,000 sq ft of office accommodation in phase two - one block is still available and one is under negotiation. Construction is expected to be finished early next year.
Irish Life spent £14 million on a 50,000 sq ft building that is now occupied by NTL at a rent of £16 per sq ft. German software giant, SAP, was interested in occupying the building, but according to Earlsfort Centre Developments the company, "needed it sooner than we could deliver", leaving the way clear for NTL. Other phase two tenants include Conduit and Cisco Systems. Rents are pitched in the region of £15 to £18 per sq ft.
Three acres of Earlsfort-owned land was taken by compulsory purchase order for the development of the Dublin Port Tunnel, which has a target 40-month completion time.
Earlsfort has submitted a planning application for a further two buildings of 90,000 sq ft on the east of the site fronting the port tunnel. If it gets the go-ahead, it should be finished by autumn 2002.
