THE DECISION by a number of international retail chains to locate their biggest shops in Ireland in Cork is a vote of confidence in the city, said Lord Mayor Dara Murphy as a new €600 million shopping and office precinct opened on Leeside yesterday.
Mr Murphy said the opening of the Opera Lane and Half Moon Street developments would bring the amount of retail space in Cork city centre to over 900,000sq ft.
“That’s four times the size of Dundrum Shopping Centre and it shows that Cork is the best shopping option for all of Munster and south Leinster. The fact that chains like Mothercare and Next have their largest stores nationally here confirms that,” he said.
Mr Murphy was speaking as Swedish retailer HM became the first shop in the Opera Lane development to open, with about 80 per cent of the retail units expected to open by Christmas. Nearby Half Moon Street will have achieved a 50 per cent occupancy by year’s end.
The development on the site of the old Irish Examiner building on Academy Street and former Johnson and Perrott garage on Emmet Place is the brainchild of developer Owen O’Callaghan, who hailed the project as a major boost for Cork city centre.
“Opera Lane is a different type of centre. It’s not a shopping centre, it’s a new street. What we will have there is a little bit like Knightsbridge or Oxford Street, with large units of 20,000 to 25,000sq feet, core stores which will stand completely on their own over four floors.
“The economic climate at the moment is very difficult, but we’ve already achieved an 80 per cent letting in Opera Lane, with multiples such as HM, Topshop, Next, Boots, Gap, River Island and New Look all due to open there before Christmas,” he said.
Mr O’Callaghan said 1,800 people will be employed in full-time and part-time jobs in Opera Lane and Half Moon Street.
Mr O’Callaghan spent €100 million in acquiring the Opera Lane site and Half Moon Street sites.
Opera Lane involved the widening of Faulkner’s Lane and the construction of the centre around the 18th-century Queen Anne House on Emmet Place, which, along with Le Chateau on Patrick Street, is one of just a handful of original buildings to be retained.
Meanwhile, Mr O’Callaghan reiterated his dislike of Nama, saying he believed there was going to be major difficulty with getting the correct valuations on the loans it takes over, while he also expressed concern at the fact that developers were not consulted.
“The biggest problem I have with Nama is that it’s something set up between Government and banks. The genuine developer, like ourselves, is left out of it. As I speak, I don’t know whether we will be in Nama or not,” he said. “There’s no reason why we should be. Our banking facility is as it should be: we have performing loans, we’re paying all our interest, everything is quite normal. I don’t see any reason why we should be involved in Nama, but we just don’t know what’s happening.”