Deal with centre hangs in the balance

THE owner of a Cork shopping centre has given Marks & Spencer until Friday to sign a new lease to take over a former Roches Stores plot or he will withdraw from negotiations with the retailer.

However, Joe O’Donovan, majority owner of Wilton Shopping Centre, said he has already lined up another “large” retailer willing to take on the 45,000sq ft plot instead.

If that does happen, he said, the “bulk” of the 172 Roches Stores staff, who were due to be taken on by M&S and who feared they would lose their jobs, could be taken on by the as yet unnamed retailer.

The announcement came following three days of confusion over the future of the staff, some of whom have had close to 30 years’ service with Roches.

A deal was signed earlier this year between M&S and Roches, which established that the British retailer would take over the entire site. Roches Stores closed down three weeks ago in anticipation of the hand-over.

Then, on Sunday, the deal fell through. M&S claimed it was because Mr O’Donovan did not agree to the takeover of the 45,000 square foot premises for the same rent that had been paid by Roches.

Following a day of protest by more than 100 Roches workers at the centre on Monday, Mr O’Donovan said he would hand over the site to Marks & Spencer if it would pay €30 per sq ft, a figure, he said, that had been agreed last April.

M&S said that figure had not been agreed by them and was double the lease paid by Roches Stores. The company said it would not pay that much.

Then as the workers yesterday spent a second day protesting, Marks & Spencer issued a statement claiming Mr O’Donovan had formally stated he was not offering M&S the lease, as he intended to sub-divide the unit.

Many staff gathered at the site of their employers were in tears, fearing their jobs were gone.

However, last night Mr O’Donovan denied the statement by M&S and said a solicitor’s letter had been sent to the retailer saying the unit was still available until Friday. He accused M&S of playing with the staff’s emotions for its own gain.

“Money is not the issue here; 170 staff are being messed around.”

He said €30 per sq ft was a reasonable market rate for the site and if the company was not willing to pay that figure he had a contingency plan.

“Another large retailer has come out of the woodwork willing to take on the store and the bulk of the staff. When they were enquiring, they said that rental figure would not be a problem,” he said.

In response, Hamilton Osborne King chairman Aidan O’Hogan, representing M&S, said the deal with Roches was to take on the staff and a lease at the same rate paid by Roches, €762,000.

He said any other company would have to take on the millions of euro in redundancy liability, which Marks & Spencer had agreed to take on as part of its deal with Roches Stores.

Mr O’Hogan said that if Mr O’Donovan’s main concern was the workers, he should allow the deal agreed between Roches and M&S to proceed.