€119m deal spells end for landmark hotel

THE Berkeley Court hotel is set to disappear after millionaire property developer Sean Dunne won the €119 million race to buy the Dublin 4 landmark yesterday.

The deal means Mr Dunne, who recently scooped the site of the Jurys Ballsbridge hotel next door for €260m, has spent almost €380m on just seven acres of prime development land adjacent to Lansdowne Road in Dublin’s Ballsbridge.

The Jurys Doyle hotel group, which owned both sites, said it would continue to operate the Berkeley Court until late 2007. Mr Dunne is expected to close the hotel and clear the site to make way for large-scale residential development.

The price paid was higher than most expectations. Mr Dunne raised eyebrows in July when he splashed out €52m per acre on the first of the two sites, but yesterday’s deal valued the Berkeley Court at an even more impressive €55m per acre.

The property developer, who came to prominence on the back of the success of his building company, Mountbrook Homes, has already flagged plans to revolutionise the Dublin 4 property market by building around 500 top-of-the-range apartments on the Jurys Ballsbridge site. His proposed development could be as high as 32 storeys if he can convince planners to agree.

Mr Dunne is understood to have beaten stiff competition to land the Berkeley Court site, but property watchers said he had been in pole position after building up a 28% stake in Jurys Doyle over the summer. He recently agreed to sell this stake to the company’s other major shareholder, a consortium headed by daughters of legendary hotelier PV Doyle.

The consortium recently took outright control of the company, which had been at the centre of a takeover battle over the last six months, for €1.25 billion. Mr Dunne was rumoured to be considering his own bid for the group but cleared up speculation in recent weeks.

Jurys Doyle, which is expected to quit the Irish stock exchange within weeks and become a private company, will use the cash windfall to repay bank debt.