Talbot Hotel eyes €10m Wexford tourism plan in purchase of Stonebridge

A Wexford mixed-use development, which has lain idle for eight years, is to become an ‘aparthotel’ in a tourism development by the Talbot Hotel Collection. Total investment there may be close to €10m.

The hotel group, which employs 600 in Cork, Carlow, Wexford and Dublin, has confirmed the purchase of the Stonebridge scheme, on Paul’s Quay, Wexford, just 100 metres from its existing Talbot Hotel.

Developed in 2008, Stonebridge has ground-floor retail units, including a TKMaxx, 314 parking spaces, 73 luxury apartments and duplexes overhead (never occupied), and a renovated, six-storey grain store, plus two other buildings, on two acres.

Reckoned to be one of the largest, recent mixed-use sales in the south-east, Stonebridge went to market in September, 2015, for €6.75m, through DTZ Sherry FitzGerald.

It’s understood that the Talbot Hotel Collection paid just over that price for the quayside property to add to its burgeoning tourism portfolio.

Owner of the Talbot Hotel Collection, Cormac Pettitt, described the purchase as a major acquisition, exciting both for the group and for the town, and said “our plans are to invest a further €2.5m to complete these luxury apartments and welcome guests by the middle of this year.”

The family-owned group started in the retail trade 70 years ago, on Oyster Lane, right by the Stonebridge site, and later established the Talbot Hotel in the 20,000-population county town of Wexford.

The hotel group’s parent company runs six Pettitt family SuperValu supermarkets in Wexford, Wicklow and Kildare.

The Talbot Hotel Collection bought the 79-bed Midleton Park Hotel, in Cork, almost two years ago, for €3m to €4m, and spent up to €1m on improvements, and, later in 2014, bought the Oriel House, in Cork’s Ballincollig, for around €8m.

It also owns the former Stillorgan Park Hotel, in Dublin, and Talbot Hotels in Carlow and in Wexford, by the quays.

Now, Stonebridge will be branded a Talbot Hotel Collection ‘aparthotel’, with guests having access to the hotel’s services and pool.

Managing director, Philip Gavin, described the ‘aparthotel’ venture as “a completely unique tourism proposition”.