€13m price tag for Cork office complex

A major office complex at Cork Airport Business Park, which is a key local employer, and with global retail giant Amazon among its top tenants, is for sale.

Carrying a €13m-plus price tag and with a rent-roll of €1.6m across five buildings and top tenants, it is hoped the sell-off will draw international investor interest to quality out-of-Dublin investments.

The offer of five buildings all fully tenanted by the likes of Amazon, GlaxoSmithKline, the National Cancer Registry Board, Red Hat, Hittite, and Vertex, totals 120,000sq ft. It is the single biggest office investment to be offered internationally outside of Dublin.

It comes just a week after a Hong Kong investor acquired a Cork City office investment let to Deloitte for €4m, with more than €400,000 in rent-roll. Recent weeks also saw the Fota Island Hotel Resort and golf courses sold for €20m to Chinese buyers.

Overseas buyers are driving the recovery in the commercial property market, which is expected to double its investment levels this year to about €1.2bn.

However, the majority of that resurgent activity has been in Dublin, with office investments leading the way. The Cork Airport Business Park offer is the first significant quality office investment outside of the Dublin market to test the waters.

Agents scouting Irish and overseas investors for the five buildings and three-acre development site at Cork Airport are Lisneys and DTZ Sherry FitzGerald. They are also selling a three-acre site in the Park’s Phase Two, which is virtually fully occupied.

Developers were Bank of Scotland (Ireland), Bernard McNamara of McNamara Construction, and Dublin Airport Authority. Owners are Brooklyn