The Government is set to cash in for a third time on the property boom in Ballsbridge as it prepares to sell a prominent office building across from the Jury's Hotel complex in south Dublin.
Informed sources say the nine-storey Lansdowne House building, which the Government acquired for €29.8 million in 1999, is likely to come on the market early next year. The quarter-acre site includes the 6,503sq m (70,000sq ft) office block and 90 car parking spaces.
A syndicate of private investors, including the Odlum family and property developer David Maher and his family, made a handsome profit in 1999 when they sold the building to the State. They had acquired the property for €11.43 million just three years previously.
Lansdowne House will be of interest because of its proximity to the Jurys complex. The developer Seán Dunne of Mountbrook Homes spent €380 million last year buying the Jurys, Berkeley Court and Towers hotels.
He plans a high-end residential and retail zone for the area, akin to a "Knightsbridge of Dublin".
With Mr Dunne and other investors such as Ray Grehan and Jerry O'Reilly behind the massive rise in valuations in this part of Ballsbridge, the sale of Lansdowne House may provide a windfall for the Exchequer next year.
Department of Finance officials, who occupied 47 per cent of the office space, are vacating the building after the transfer in July of their unit to Tullamore, Co Offaly, under the decentralisation scheme. In anticipation of a sale, the Office of Public Works (OPW) does not plan to find replacement tenants for the space they occupied.
The remainder of the office block is occupied by officials in the Revenue service.
Plans to transfer them have not yet been formulated but the combination of the valuation spike, decentralisation and a Government commitment to sell off surplus assets means that a sale is inevitable.
Minister of State Tom Parlon, who is responsible for the OPW, has demonstrated a clear appetite for property sales in Ballsbridge.
The Government realised €171.5 million last year when it sold the former veterinary college building on Shelbourne Road to Mr Grehan. It got a further €35.9 million from the adjoining faculty building when it was sold last May to David Courtney and Jerry O'Reilly.
"Under Minister Parlon's Transforming State Assets programme and the decentralisation programme, redundant property can and will be disposed of," said the OPW's spokesman when asked about Lansdowne House.
Mr Dunne recently increased his portfolio in Ballsbridge with a deal to acquire the Hume House office block which adjoins the Jurys complex.
He secured ownership of the 7,432sq m building by way of a "swap" agreed with the Irish Life Irish Property Fund.
