Dublin City Council issues €2m tender for help and advice on pre-letting new office block
Dublin City Council (DCC) has issued a €2m tender for real estate services to “advise and assist” in pre-letting one of the blocks of the Camden Yard development.
The local authority bought the partially developed site on Kevin Street earlier this year, with plans to relocate its civic offices there from Wood Quay.
One of Camden Yard’s four office buildings, Block 3, is set to be sub-let to a private tenant once the development is complete, with the remaining office space reserved for up to 2,800 DCC staff.
The contract, which would run for an initial five years, involves “full agency services, to include market advice, full marketing and letting (including negotiations) of the office accommodation at Block 3”.
Any eligible company in the European Union can apply for the tender up to the deadline of October 12.
Social Democrats councillor Karl Stanley said he and party colleagues met DCC head of finance, Rory Flannery, at the site recently to gain an insight into the plans.
Mr Stanley said he was told by Mr Flannery that the council’s preference would be to have the sub-let office block occupied by a government department.
“Seems like an obvious kind of thing, because I guess they want a long-term tenant that will be there forever,” Mr Stanley said.
“But we didn’t talk at all about the kind of mechanics of how the council would actually go about finding the tenant.
“My working assumption was that if it’s an internal government kind of thing, there’s some sort of internal channel they can use. But I guess not.”
The Clontarf councillor said he was not certain what the cost should be for property advisory services, but €2m seemed “bananas”.
“I suppose the overall cost of developing Camden Yard is in the €500m range, so maybe relative to that, it’s fairly reasonable,” he said.
“But to my mind, €2m for professional services required to let an office block seems bananas.”
The six-block Camden Yard development is set to cost the taxpayer €581m, including around €90m for the purchase of the site.
The office development will cost €440m, while the 300-unit housing element would cost €141m.
DCC’s move would free up the Wood Quay site, with proposals outlined to knock the existing civic offices and replace them with a 530-apartment housing scheme across four blocks.
The impetus for the move – the most significant in the council’s history – is the need to improve the energy efficiency of DCC’s offices, which were completed in 1994 after years of truncated construction.
Depending on whether the refurbishment is carried out on a phased basis or in one fell swoop, the council estimates the cost of upgrading to be between €487m and €504m.
It says the cost justifies the move to Camden Yard, however, the council has refused to release the Arup report upon which these figures are based.
An Irish Independent analysis found that DCC’s calculations would put the Wood Quay retrofit bill at 137 times higher than that of other local authorities.
DCC did not respond to a request for comment.