Retailer Dunnes Stores has begun work on the fit-out of the anchor tenant unit of the Point Village development on North Wall Quay, Dublin, 15 years after the Irish supermarket chain agreed to do so in a deal with developer Harry Crosbie.
The dispute between his former company, Point Village Development Ltd (now in liquidation) and Dunnes Stores has raged in the courts ever since, with the High Court at one stage directing that the fit-out begin, but Dunnes then securing a stay on that order.
However, a notice that work was finally to commence on the unit was lodged on behalf of Dunnes Stores with Dublin City Council earlier this month. It is unclear why the supermarket chain has now decided to begin the work. A request for a comment from Dunnes Stores met with no response. Mr Crosbie said he could not comment.
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“Fit-out and material alteration of the two-storey anchor tenant unit as a Dunnes Stores grocery and textile retail store including all ancillary accommodation and staff facilities all at the Point Village, Dublin 1,” reads the seven-day commencement notice, which was lodged on August 4th and said work was to begin on August 11th.
There were a small number of workmen inside the unit, which opens on to East Wall Road, when The Irish Times visited the site on Thursday. A small Dunnes Stores grocery outlet already exists within the Point Village development, where the bulk of the interior units have never been taken up by tenants in the years since the development opened.
A health and safety notice the door of the Dunnes Stores anchor unit says the work that is being carried out there, by Elliott Building and Civil Engineering Ltd, of Drumnavanagh, Co Cavan, would involve the fitout of a new grocery store in an area of the Dunnes Stores “grey box” within the Point Square Shopping Centre, to be followed by the conversion of the existing grocery store to a textile outlet.
A deal that would see Dunnes Stores becoming the anchor tenant of the development, which at one stage was to include a “U2 Experience Museum” and a 39-storey landmark tower, was signed in February 2008, but the more ambitious aspects of the plan for the development never proceeded in the wake of the financial crisis.
In 2009, Dunnes launched proceedings in the High Court saying Point Village Development Ltd (PVDL) was in breach of the previous year’s agreement. A settlement was agreed the following year that envisaged certain multimillion-euro payments being made to PVDL when, among other matters, leases were signed by tenants in at least seven units on the ground floor of the development. The settlement said the tenants’ lease obligations might be dependent on Dunnes having commenced the fit-out of their store.
No payment forthcoming
In the years afterwards, PVDL was placed into liquidation by the National Asset Management Agency and the liquidators wrote to Dunnes claiming that conditions in the 2010 agreement had been reached. They said this required the release of €15 million to PVDL as agreed under the 2010 deal. When the payment was not forthcoming, proceedings were lodged by PVDL in 2016.
Various sets of proceedings and claims have continued since, with aspects of the dispute having been the subject of rulings by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal.
Last year, as part of a fresh claim in the High Court, Dunnes said PVDL was in breach of the 2008 agreement because the square at the Point was not of a “first class standard appropriate to a prestigious shopping centre” similar to Eyre Square in Galway, Grand Canal Square Dublin, and the Dundrum Town Centre civic plaza.
In comments at the time, Mr Justice Denis McDonald said it was “really a very unhappy picture” where there had been so much litigation between two commercial entities in relation to the development.
