Pick of the crop as Apple vacates Cork tech offices

Apple research employees had been based at Cork Business & Technology Park: the company's 6,000 Cork employees are now at  Cork's Hollyhill HQ, and in the city centre at Horgan's Quay and Half Moon Street 

Plucked: Apple has vacated Unit 8 at the Cork Business & Technology Park on the Model Farm Road. Agents  Lisney report early occupier interest to step into Apple's shoes and desks

OFFICES upgraded and used as a research facility by tech monolith Apple in their Cork  European HQ city base, but away from their major Hollyhill campus, have been put up for lease by a private landlord.

Discretion the key at Unit 8

Given the top condition the 25,000 sq ft at Unit 8, Cork Business and Techology Park, on the Model Farm Road is in, it's already getting interest from intending new users, with its walk-in state, ready to 'plug and play,' a key marketing point for letting agents Lisney.

They sold this western suburban Cork building, Unit 8,  to an undisclosed private investor in 2017, along with a second 36,000 sq ft office investment, Unit 14 occupied by Trend Micro, for a combined c €8 million, with the lease then running on Unit 8 to Apple Operations Europe, a subsidiary of Apple Inc which now employs c 6,000 in Cork.

Apple 'falls from the tree' at Model Farm Road Cork Business & Technology Park

Apple - which posted profits of €29bn last year - has an ever-evolving Cork presence, having invested €220m at its Hollyhill  HQ on the city's northside, with an expansion to one million sq ft  in recent years.

It also has a strong presence  at Half Moon Street in the city centre and, most recently and importantly for the city's evolving docklands development, took 40,000 sq ft at Horgans Quay earlier this year.

Apple had started 2020 with a search for 100,000 sq ft of Cork offices, looking north and south of the Lee at Navigation Square and at Horgans Quay, being developed by BAM/Clarendon, but Covid-19's impact had reduced the immediacy if not the scale of their Cork city space search.

The latter location, Horgans Quay/HQ won out, with Apple securing 40,000 sq ft in early 2021, taking the top three floors of a completed building designed by O'Mahony Pike.

Critically, it's understood that Apple have options of further space in the BAM/Clarndon HQ development next to Kent Rail station and the Dean hotel.

Meanwhile, the quality of the fit-out Apple have  left behind in the Model Farm Road Unit 8 Cork Business & Technology Park building is a bonus for the landlord as they now seek new occupiers.

Apple-pie order at the large canteen

Reporting already active interest, David McCarthy and Margaret Kelleher of Lisney guide the space at €16.50 psf on a new lease, about half the rent levels being secured in the new office developments downstream in the rapidly unfolding docklands, with some one million square feet of offices in the city's  development pipeline.

The c 26,000 spans open plan accommodation, capable of hosting well over 200 employees in a traditional or typical call centre layout (but used for much lower numbers by ex-tenants Apple, who vacated in the past month) conference rooms, large canteen and has a high-spec telecommunications technology and heating and air con.

The Cork Business and Technology Park is on 79 acres between the Model Farm Road and Carrigrohane Road, close to the Munster Technological University/MTU (ex-CIT) and the Rubicon Centre, with UCC 1.5kms to the east.

Neighbouring occupiers in the park include Boston Scientific, Alcon, Abtran and Pilz.

DETAILS: Lisney 021-4275079.