Former Esso station near CUH hospital on sale for €1.3m

A CORK city suburban site — with a long planning and sales history, as well as one-time high hopes of development — has come up for sale, right next door to the sprawling Cork University Hospital (CUH) campus.

Right in the very heart of Wilton, the 1.1-acre site faces where a new Aldi is to be built in coming monts, on the site of the former Wilton Motors.

It is 100 metres from the Wilton Shopping Centre, anchored by Penneys and Tesco.

It’s new to market with Maurice Cohalan and Rob Coughlan, of Cohalan Downing, and priced in excess of €1.3m: they rightly bill it as a prime opportunity.

The site served for several decades as an Esso service station, and was sold in the early 2000s, via CBRE, for an undisclosed sum for redevelopment.

Subsequently, two adjoining bungalows were added to the garage site, making for 1.1 acres, which was then offered in 2006 for €15m, with involvement, at the time, from the Kelleher family. They had owned the Bishoptown Bar and were on a buying/site assembly spree.

It was pitched then as a site for a private/co-located hospital, adjacent to CUH. It was suggested it could accommodate a five-storey, 100,000 sq ft building, plus car-parking.

It still has possible medical-related future uses, given its setting.

At today’s much-reduced price, Tesco may have an interest as a filling station close to its major Wilton Tesco Extra store. Tesco currently has 21 petrols stations among its 142 Irish stores.

This Wilton Road site has served most recently as a cafe and car-wash centre, and the two houses behind have fallen into dereliction in the last few years.

Separately, the Wilton Shopping Centre is expected to come for sale this year for Nama, and plans were drafted in the mid-2000s for a major redevelopment of that centre, one of Munster’s busiests, co-anchored by Penneys.

Zoning for the 1.1-acre former Esso site, now being offered for sale by private treaty with Cohalan Downing for receiver David Swinburne, of KPMG, is zoned ‘district centre’, which is intended “to provide for and/or improve district centres as mixed-use centres, with a primary retail function, which also act as a focus for a range of services”.

Details: Cohalan Downing, 021-4277717.