Treasury Holdings, the property company run by Mr Johnny Ronan and Mr Richard Barrett, has emerged as one of the backers of a bid for the Millennium Dome in London. The Legacy consortium, put together by Mr Robert Bourne, a millionaire businessman and British Labour Party supporter, wants to turn the Dome into a high-tech science park.
A spokesman for the Dublin company confirmed that it is involved in the project but would not comment on reports that Treasury is now the main financial backer of the consortium, which has bid £105 million sterling for the site in Greenwich. Barclays Capital, the British bank, is involved, according to the spokesman, but details of the group's finances have not been made public.
Legacy originally bid £155 million sterling for the Dome when the British government put it up for sale earlier this year. The offer was rejected in favour of an approach from Nomura, the Japanese bank, which bid only £105 million but wanted to turn the site into an amusement park.
Nomura subsequently pulled out because of uncertainty over the Dome's liabilities. Legacy then cut its bid to £105 million sterling to match the bank's offer. The consortium has told British ministers it can start work on the business park within weeks, which puts pressure on the British government to close the troubled attraction early. Legacy says its plans will create 9,000 jobs in east London and support another 35,000 in the Thames gateway area.
The consortium plans to construct lightweight buildings under the Dome to form a campus for high-tech start-up companies. However, English Partnerships, the body selling the Dome, is concerned about the impact of such work on the fabric out of which the Dome is constructed. Other buildings will be constructed on the land surrounding the Dome.
BT and Sun MicroSystems have lent their support to the Legacy bid, but have not committed themselves to taking space in the new park. The project also has the support of the Open University, the London School of Economics and Imperial College.
Treasury Holdings has been involved in a number of developments in Dublin that would be considered large by Irish standards, but has not developed anything on the scale of the Dome project. The tented structure has roughly the same floor area as 1 Canada Square, the tower across the river at Canary Wharf.
Treasury's largest project, a £1.2 billion development at Spencer Dock in Dublin, is currently on hold after An Bord Pleanala refused planning permission for the bulk of the development. The group is pressing ahead with an alternative scheme for the £100 million site despite the Government's wish that CIE should sell it in order to meet its investment requirements.
The most recent published accounts for Treasury Holdings relate to 1998 and show that it had property investments worth £108 million. These investments are understood to include property in Britain and Ireland.
