The Fitzpatrick Hotel Group has decided against selling five large Georgian houses at Lower Leeson Street, Dublin 2, and may reapply for planning permission to convert them into a hotel. The houses were offered for sale by tender in November and despite a high level of interest in them, the company has now decided to withdraw them from the market.

Agents Druker Fanning and Partners had been quoting a guide price of £4.5 million for numbers 48 to 52 Leeson Street but in view of their high-profile location and the scarcity of development opportunities in the city, some developers were apparently prepared to pay close to £6 million for them. Most of those who tendered for the property had planned to use the houses and an adjoining site for a mixture of offices and apartments. Georgian office rents have risen by up to 33 per cent in the past year while the demand for large apartments is still particularly strong in the city centre.

Last August, An Bord Pleanala overruled a decision by Dublin Corporation granting planning permission for a four-storey hotel with 140 bedrooms. The plan would have involved the demolition of an unlisted mews office building at Adelaide Road/Leeson Place and the construction of a four-storey with attic over basement extension to accommodate a swimming-pool, gymnasium and 145 car-parking spaces. The appeals board ruled that the scheme would amount to a material contravention of the city development plan, would constitute over-development of the site and would detract from the existing architectural and civic design character of the area. It also held that the hotel would tend to create serious traffic congestion and would seriously injure the residential amenities of property in the vicinity.

When it failed to secure planning approval, the Fitzpatrick group decided to look for an alternative site. However, the company obviously had second thoughts about disposing of the houses because it is virtually impossible to find a hotel site in the south-city suburbs. Fitzpatricks paid around £3.8 million for the five buildings in April, 1996. Three of them were previously occupied by Ansbacher Bank and the other two were rented by the Frank Glennon insurance brokers.

Fitzpatricks is currently developing its second hotel in New York. It also has hotels at Killiney in Dublin, Cork and Shannon.