Deals done at Penrose

A letting of an office floor to growing research company UTRC in the rebranded and upgraded Penrose Wharf Business Centre puts the building vacated last year by Siemens back onto the market competitively.

Further deals are set to follow, says owner Jack Lynch.

Mr Lynch has let floor four of the 12-year-old third-generation office block to multinational United Technologies Research Centre (Ireland), a wing of United Technologies, which employs 200,000 worldwide. Research wing UTRC employs 450, in Connecticut, Shanghai and Cork.

They’ve moved from the Tyndall Institute, with 23 jobs settling in at Penrose Wharf and this number is expected to grow to 50, most of whom are PhDs or have advanced degrees in science and engineering. Businesses UTC owns include Otis, Pratt & Whitney, Carrier and Sikorsky. UTRC moved to Cork as part of a €15m investment, backed by the IDA.

UTRC-Ireland founding manager John Milton-Benoit says: “We’ve outgrown our space since opening our doors in Sep 2010, growing from three to approximately 25 staff in 20 months. As we expect to build on our interaction with the cluster of energy research institutes in Cork, like the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre (HMRC), Information and Communication Technology for Sustainable and Optimised Building Operation (ITOBO) and the Irish Government’s recently-formed International Energy Research Center (IERC) at Tyndall National Institute, we plan to double in size again by 2014.”

There are 600 jobs in situ at Penrose Wharf, mostly in the older quayside buildings, and several hundred more jobs could be added when the four- to five-storey office building is let after its upgrade.

Mr Lynch also owns Thompson House in Cork, with c 600 jobs based there, including Starwood.

Property agent and advisor for new lettings is Peter O’Flynn, of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald, who said Mr Lynch’s flexibility as a landlord, plus the quality of the locations of his properties, continued to make them highly attractive to users. Penrose Wharf Business Centre is situated right between Cork’s rail and bus stations, a five-minute walk from Patrick’s Street.

Quoted rents are €12 psf, with low-level service charges of around €1 psf. Also available shortly will be c 3,200 sq ft at ground level, currently being refurbished.

Details: DTZ Sherry FitzGerald, 021-4275454