Blackpool in Nama sale

CORK’S Blackpool Shopping Centre has a €75m valuation, as part of a €130m Nama first ‘Acorn Portfolio’ sale of Irish shopping centres, with 120 tenants.

One of Munster’s largest retail centres, it was developed in the early 2000s, at a reported mixed-used (including residential element) investment cost of €400m but had considerable elements sold off to office occupiers, a cinema operator, investors and the likes of Dunnes Stores, who own their own major 75,000 sq ft anchor store.

The Blackpool Centre, along with Clonmel’s Showgrounds Centre and Balbriggan’s Millfield Shopping Centre, is being sold by Nama, who decided on the mix to attract overseas investors and Irish Reits, with returns of c 9.5% and rents of €13.8m.