Fáilte Ireland to open office in Cork

There’s already a feather in the cap of 125 Patrick Street Cork, as new tenants Fáilte Ireland/the Irish Tourist Board prepare to open a new city centre tourist visitor offices at this high-profile city centre building.

Thu, 29 Sep, 2016 - 01:00

Tommy Barker

Previously trading as Black Tie and bought last year by an investor, No 125 is right by St Patrick’s Bridge, facing the Merchants Quay Shopping Centre, and which is now up for sale (see story this page).

A giant yellow feather this week crowns No 125, which for decades was a bar, the Swan and Cygnet, before being acquired by Black Tie and has been vacant for several years.

The eye-catching roof-top feather’s a temporary, week-long installation to mark Carbon Awareness Week: it’s one of two sentinel yellow feathers a-quiver on Twitter, one Leeside, one Liffeyside, with the Dublin feather on top of the Winding Stair building on Dublin’s quays by the Halfpenny Bridge.

Not in the ha’penny place any longer is No 125 Patrick Street: it’s understood that Bord Gáis are paying to the tune of €2,500 for the one week- long ‘feather’ spot stunt (the feathers may belong to the gravel-voiced singing CGI canary and true Dub Tommy McAnairey, whose feathery yellow wings pluck a guitar in TV ads exhorting the installation of carbon monoxide alarms).

More long-term, No 125’s ground floor of some 720 sq ft is now committed to a new tourism office presence from Q1 2017, under a c €55,000 pa 10-year lease, signed via letting agent Con Nagle of Global Properties. Global had sought €90,000 for the full, four-storey corner building with dual frontage to Lavitts Quay, and will now market the upper floors separately.

No 125 was one of four vacant retail units in a block of seven facing Merchants Quay, in an area with strong pedestrian footfall, especially passed by thousands of students daily from the many second level schools, language schools and private colleges clustered around St Patrick’s Hill.

The corner building, now swooped on by the tourism board (currently with offices on the Grand Parade), is close to several tourist/souvenir/music shops, as well as a Kilkenny Design, Easons, the Savoy Shopping Centre, Edinburgh Woolen Mills etc.

And, diagonally across St Patrick’s Bridge near where many tourist busses do drop offs is a kiosk-sized premises leased in 2012 by Paddywagon Tours, who have two years left to run on a 1993 lease, originally let to Irish Ferries.

Might the deals at 125 Patrick Street mark the turning of a tide for this neglected end of ‘Pana?’