Take your pick on the Weir

FROM flat irons to flats — estate agent Peter Skuse throws a shape on stories as well as properties.

Charged with the sale of a two-bed flat or apartment in Cork’s Salmon Weir development, he’s as much taken by the shape of a 19th neighbouring city building which is often overlooked or passed by.

By the Salmon Weir entrance is a compact, three-storey wedge-shaped block building, tapering to a gentle curve at its western end with elegant retained sash windows. Owned by the Perrott family, no 12 (with various 12a, 12b, etc., variations) houses a range of businesses, including the model retailer Noel Barrett who has been indulging his hobby, model boats, cars and planes here since the 1960s.

He recalls other previous tenants being as diverse as a Waterford Crystal showrooms, car scrappers and loan offices — pawnbrokers, and in its earliest days was part of the Hive Engineering Works. Its distinctive shape, notes Mr Skuse, is redolent — albeit on a very small and local scale — of the noted Fuller Building or the Flat Iron at 23rd and 5th in New York City, or the copper canopy-topped Gooderham in Toronto.

Back on home turf, next door to this protected and beguiling building, he’s selling 18 Salmon Weir, a two-bed apartment built in the early 1990s as part of a Section 23 development.

It overlooks Hanover Street, rather than the River Lee on the other side of Salmon Weir, is between the city centre and UCC and has living room/kitchen/dining area, two bedrooms and a bathroom.

There is full Section 23 remaining on the property, worth €51,000 which may be utilised immediately, and we’re asking €270,000,” says the Cahalane Skuse agent.