Dublin’s Grafton Street shopping precinct is set to get a major boost from December 18th when fashion giant H&M opens a flagship store with its main entrance on to Andrew Street – opposite the tourist office. The original front door on College Green will also be used.
The Swedish group behind the project is to use the newly-refurbished former National Irish Bank as its key store in the city as it steps up competition with other fashion outlets for a greater share of the fast moving clothing market.
H&M already has outlets on South King Street, Wicklow Street, the Ilac Centre and Blanchardstown.
It also plans to put its luxury brand & Other Stories into the former A/wear shop on Grafton Street next year.
Although the former bank building faces on to College Green the expectation is that the vast majority of shoppers coming from either Grafton Street or Wicklow Street will use the Andrew Street entrance and exit.
Most of the pedestrian traffic is expected to come from the bottom of Grafton Street via Suffolk Street which may eventually be pedestrianised.
Although College Green has particularly heavy pedestrian traffic for most of the day it is questionable whether H&M will be able to make much use of the various bank windows there to display its goods because of their elevated position on the front of the building.
However, any shortcomings in this area will be more than compensated for by the stunning interior of the building, noted for its vaulted ceiling with highly ornate plasterwork, decorative arches and impressive columns from ground to second floor. It could well become Dublin’s most distinguished store.
H&M will trade out of 2,322sq m (25,000 sq ft) on five levels – basement, ground, mezzanine, first and second floors.
Even before the store opens for business some retail experts consider it to be under-rented at €830,000 per annum plus a turnover-related top-up. This may well be explained by the fact that the rent was set just over a year ago when retail sales faced difficulties and business confidence had taken a hammering.
Within weeks of the former bank building being acquired by Clarendon – a company controlled Paddy McKillen and Tony Leonard – H&M jumped at the opportunity to trade out of it after failing to find a suitably large premises on Grafton Street.
The earlier success of Abercrombie & Fitch in trading out of another former bank building two doors away on College Green may well have encouraged the Swedish company to settle on the newly-available 1864 corner building with its external Italian Gothic features.
In addition to the €4.5 million spent on acquiring the bank building Clarendon is spending a further €8 million on refurbishing and upgrading it and developing eight of the city’s most exclusive apartments on the top floor and at attic level. Some of the duplex units will have private balconies. The owners have also commissioned a top UK electrical company to install an elaborate lighting system on the outside of the building to highlight its distinctive architectural features.
Meanwhile H&M has confirmed that its top of the market brand & Other Stories is to trade out of the former A/wear store opposite Brown Thomas on Grafton Street.
The five-storey over-basement building has the largest retail area on the street after BT2 – apart from the department stores – with more than 975sq m (10,500sq ft) at basement, ground and first floor levels. The rent has been set at €920,000 per annum.
Eoin Feeney of BNP Paribas Real Estate handled the letting for owners Aviva Investors who are planning to carry out a major upgrading of the block including the installation of a new façade. In the meantime, the shop has been rented to HMV on a short-term lease until next January at a rent which equates to €750,000.
