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One of the pieces of farmland closest to the M50 has just changed hands – for just under €300,000/ac. This is without counting an undisclosed bonus if the land is rezoned for development in the next 10 years.
The 98.3ac acquired by Hibernia Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) for €28.7m is reserved for agricultural use under the current local development plan, expiring in 2022.
The farm has an interesting history. Nationalist writer and Irish cultural revival figure Katharine Tynan was born there in 1859. Now nestled between the N7, the M50 and the Luas red line at Dublin’s Newlands Cross, the farm more recently appeared in national news in the late 1990s when the IRFU bought it and joined forces with the FAI with the hope of building a new national stadium there.
The project was in competition with the infamous Bertie Bowl at the time (those were the boom years, after all).
Everyone ended up agreeing to redevelop Lansdowne Road into the present-day Aviva stadium instead.
The rugby federation did use a site on the farm to store the topsoil from the Lansdowne Road pitches during renovation works, before reusing the historic compost at the Aviva.
The IRFU had not realised planning permission was needed for the operation and received a tackle from the county council at the time.
The organisation is now selling its 92.5ac property to Hibernia REIT for €27m, plus the potential rezoning bonus. The developer has also bought another neighbouring 5.8ac from a separate owner for €1.7m, and said it hoped to use the combined properties for mixed commercial and residential development.
It already owns an adjacent 45.4ac, most of it farmland bought last year … at a rate €100,000/ac cheaper.
When The Dealer visited this week, the IRFU land was freshly tilled while other fields were under grassland.
The rest of the site surrounds An Post’s former SDS warehouse, since used in part to build access roads to the Luas Red Cow depot.
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