Rents in Blanchardstown Town Centre in west Dublin are expected to at least double when the first review takes place in the run-up to the November deadline. About 80 of the 90 traders will be affected by the higher charges which will bring them into line with those in the newly opened Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords and Liffey Valley in west Dublin.

The review will give owners Green Property Company a rent roll of over £16 million (

Although Green's agents, Palmer McCormack and Jones Lang Wootton, have not yet told tenants of the size of the rent increases to be sought, insiders believe that the new Zone A level will probably be on a par with the £130 per sq ft achieved at The Pavilions - another centre trading better than expected even though it only opened in the past month. A number of the key units in the Pavilions for which there was intense competition are though to have made up to £150 per sq ft.

The Jervis Centre in the north inner city attracted Zone A rents of £120 per sq ft as far back as November, 1996, when it opened but these could not be used as a precedent because the tenants are able to avail of double rent allowances and a remission of rates for ten years.

Since then Liffey Valley also hit the £130 mark when it opened in October, 1998, though here again there were special conditions-the size was originally capped at 250,000 sq ft-though if the owners have their way it will eventually be doubled in size.

A standard 1,000 sq ft shop in Blanchardstown is rented at an average of £40,000 per annum but most of the big name traders have considerably larger units. Dixons pay £150,000 for 5,000 sq ft while Virgin pay the same amount for 6,000 sq ft. Even this is small potatoes compared to the Arcadia group which has an annual rental bill of around £750,000 for its nine stores including Evens, Dorothy Perkins, Top Shopds, Adams and Miss Selfridge.