IT MIGHT SEEM to be straight out of a Ross O'Carroll-Kelly book, but the story of one-time billionaires opening a discount shop in a Dublin 4 hotel to challenge Lidl is not fiction but a sign of our cash-strapped times, writes CONOR POPE
Last week Gayle Killilea, the wife of financially troubled property developer Sean Dunne, lifted the shutters on what she describes as a low-cost shop in the grounds of the D4 Ballsbridge Inn (formerly Jurys Inn Ballsbridge).
Dunne paid €450 million for the Jurys and Berkeley Court hotels and an adjoining site in Ballsbridge in 2005 but his plan to turn the seven acre site into a €1.5 billion high-rise, high-priced apartment complex and business district foundered after his planning application was rejected at the beginning of this year.
With his glass towers on ice, his wife has now taken the considerably more modest step of opening a “convenience store and an off-licence with good parking” on the site. “A lot of people in Ballsbridge have been wiped out financially, like everywhere else in the country,” Killilea was quoted as saying in a newspaper report earlier this week. “There’s no Aldi or Lidl here, but people want value for money in Ballsbridge as much as they do anywhere.”
Fast forward a week and the shop is mired in controversy. Last Tuesday, following a complaint by Labour Party councillor Kevin Humphreys, the couple were warned by Dublin City Council that their new venture did not fall within the planning permission for the Ballsbridge site and that enforcement proceedings could follow.
In order to comply with regulations, the council said the couple would have to apply for “change of use” permission to transfer the hotel to a supermarket.
“It is not a supermarket, it is a local shop, a convenience store,” says Killilea.
“This idea that we would open up without proper planning? Give me a break. [Mr Humphreys] is complaining about the shop but what about the 10 new jobs? Thanks very much! The negativity is just too much,” she says.
She takes a breath before taking aim at Lucinda Creighton the local Fine Gael TD who also voiced concerns about the new shop. “I really resent her line that Sean is flouting planning laws again. Tell me when has he ever done that?”
PLANNING MATTERSaside, what many people living in the area will probably care more about is whether D4 Stores actually represents good value for money and if it is worth visiting. When The Irish Timesshowed up unannounced on Wednesday morning, there were just three customers and Killilea herself on the shop floor. As media savvy as you might expect a former journalist to be, she immediately agreed to give us a tour of the shop and its contents.
Just over 90 seconds later the tour was complete. Given all the attention that has been paid to it over the last eight days, the store is remarkably small. It’s laughable to think that a shop which is effectively no bigger than a mid-sized Centra or Spar could really take on the big boys in Irish retailing, a point Killilea accepts.
She says that while she initially wanted to open a discount supermarket, it proved to be impossible “because of planning issues, with which we are totally compliant”.
Another stumbling block was, she says, a lack of clout with suppliers. “I don’t have the buying power they have, but knowing what I know now about the business, I am certain the big retailers who do have that buying power are charging way more than they should be.”
The store is being supplied by Barry’s of Mallow, a wholesaler which operates a chain of stores of its own under the Costcutter umbrella. On Wednesday a Barry’s rep was in-store tweaking some of the prices. “There have been teething problems and we are still trying to get the prices right,” Killilea says. “There were some lines that were too dear when we opened.”
About a quarter of the shop is taken up by an off-licence – Killilea says the hotel wasn’t “taking full advantage of our drinks licence”.
There are pallets stacked high with cases of lager and wine – Miller is on special with 20 bottles costing €20.
Given the shop’s location, presumably the biggest sellers are Sancerre and Prosecco? Not a bit of it. The most popular drink in D4 Stores this week has been the somewhat more down-market Dutch Gold lager.
UNFORTUNATELY FOR D4Stores, the price comparisons we carried out did it few favours. A basket of 14 commonly bought items, which cost us €66.90 in Tesco on Baggot Street, would have set us back €73.64 in D4 Stores, with just one product costing less and another costing the same.
The store does have a range of special offers, with Volvic water, Persil washing powder, Johnson & Johnson baby wipes and fairly unfamiliar brands of toilet paper and kitchen towels selling for prices which are, broadly speaking, comparable with what is on offer in the country’s biggest supermarkets. Some of next week’s specials may dismay the store’s detractors, with discounted vodka and alcopops likely to be particularly popular or unpopular depending on your position.
Prices aside, the other thing Killilea is claiming to bring to the Ballsbridge shopping experience is easy parking. Parking is free for the first half an hour but after that the charges mount up very fast. “I don’t see how it could take anyone longer than that to do their shopping here but if it does, I’d have no problem validating it,” Killilea says. “I live in the area and there is a big problem with parking close to convenience stores. I’m not a very confident parker. Sean’s fine, he’ll just push his way in.”