UCC offers €1.42m for former TSB building on Lapps Quay

UCC is in line to pay Cork City Council more than €1.4m for a former Permanent TSB branch, subject to approval by councillors next week.

The Lapps Quay building was acquired by the council from Permanent TSB for around €750,000 in 2013. It was decided earlier this year to place it on the market.

The proposed €1.425m sale price is one-and-a-half times the guide price placed on it in April. A decision to proceed with the transaction will rest with council members, when the matter arises at their meeting next Monday.

The university’s bid was selected from 19 expressions of interest, with plans to offer business courses for executives and postgraduate students, in areas related to technology, healthcare, and financial services.

The go-ahead would see it become the second third-level institution at either end of Cork’s South Mall, after the granting of planning permission for Cork Institute of Technology to move courses to an historic building at Grand Parade. It is moving some Crawford College of Art & Design courses to the 19th-century riverside building next to the pedestrian Nano Nagle Bridge, bought last autumn for around €1m.

The premises was built around 1840 and has been home to the City Club, the Legion of Mary, and had been, more recently, in use for financial services by Bank of Scotland and Certus.

The relocating courses are currently run in rented space at the former Government buildings complex on Sullivan’s Quay,which is due for redevelopment.