€50m spend will transform Cork's Metropole Hotel

A €50 million spend on 400 hotel bedrooms is heralded for one of Cork city’s oldest hotels, The Metropole, to include extension and refurbishment, the provision of a retail arcade, and a new adjoining hotel to be called the ‘M’, in a scheme likely to take three to five years to deliver.

Planning permission is to be sought within days by a new company, Trigon Hotels, associated with Philip Hotel Holdings Ltd who bought the 112-bed Metropole two years ago for €5m.

It followed up its acquisition later in 2015 by buying the adjacent PJ O’Hea 0.36 acre site across Harley Street for €1.35 million, and has spent over a year drawing up plans for what will be Cork’s largest hotel complex in two associated buildings with glass bridge links above Harley Street, but all centered on the classic Metropole, which celebrates its 120th anniversary this year.