The Circuit Court set the annual rent for Bewley’s Café at €738,169.74 for a five-year tenancy beginning in August 2022, subject to an adjustment for restroom space. The figure includes a 5% uplift because of the lease’s short duration.
The rent dispute was the remaining issue after the parties consented in June 2024 to a new tenancy for Bewley’s Café Grafton Street Limited. The landlord, RGRE Grafton Limited, disputed that tenant-funded works had increased the property’s letting value. The court’s judgment was delivered on 25 October 2024.
The tenant’s valuer, Fergus Crosse, proposed a rent based on retail zoning, while the landlord’s valuer, David Potter, assessed the building as a restaurant using an overall rate per square foot and restaurant comparisons. The court said zoning was the industry standard for commercial premises on Grafton Street, but that the result should also be checked against overall rates and city-centre restaurant rents.
The court accepted €427.50 per square foot as the zone A starting rate, giving greater weight to the Canada Goose letting because it was an open-market letting of a protected structure. It rejected applying a multiplier to restaurant rents, saying there was no evidence of a city-centre restaurant paying more than €99 per square foot.
For the rear ground-floor area, which the court described as a distinctive dining space with Harry Clarke stained-glass windows, it applied €74 per square foot rather than treating the area as storage or utility space. Its calculations put the statutory gross rent at €703,018.80 a year before the short-lease uplift. The court said the resulting ground-floor rate of €144 per square foot was at the lower end of Grafton Street comparisons, while exceeding the highest restaurant comparison cited.
On improvements, the court found that any barrier between the front and rear of the building in 1987 was not permanent or structural and could be ignored for valuation. It also included the porch, display areas, partitioned offices and lavatories in the valuation. The court’s calculations attributed an increase in rental value of €10,444.05 to improvements, producing the statutory rent of €703,018.80.
The court made no order as to costs and granted liberty to apply.