Retail opportunity at site of Cork city 'erotica' shop PlayBlue sure to attract passionate investors 

"In some people’s eyes I was one step up from a drug dealer when I opened an adult shop first, but when 50 Shades of Grey came out, all of a sudden I was an entrepreneur,” says tenant PlayBlue's owner 

All to play for? Investment property at No 2 Careys Lane Cork is let to adult shop chain PlayBlue

A RETAIL investment in Cork city’s historic Huguenot Quarter let to leading Irish adult and erotica shop and online company PlayBlue, has come up for sale.

Fresh to market is No 2 Careys Lane, just off Paul Street Plaza, on a pedestrian street linking to St Patrick’s Street at the junction there now occupied by Dubray Books.

No 2 is let to Irish retailer PlayBlue, in situ since 2019 on a ten-year lease. The late 1990s-founded business which started in Kilkenny also retails in Tallaght, Dublin where it has a warehouse, with the company saying that 80% of its trade is online, whilst owner Richie Cullen has said the success of 50 Shades of Grey series of books and movies was an enormous boost to his trade.

Author E L James holds a copy of the erotic fiction book "50 Shades of Grey" at a 2012 book signing.

In an interview in 2017, 20 years after returning from Australia to become self-employed and start his own business, he said “when I opened first I didn’t know anything about the adult industry – I just wanted to open my own business. In some people’s eyes I was one step up from a drug dealer when I opened an adult shop first, but when 50 Shades of Grey came out, all of a sudden I was an entrepreneur.” 

In Cork city, Mr Cullen's Playblue premises is in the 568 sq ft No 2 Careys Lane, next to Dukes coffee shop,  opposite the former Mangan's nightclub/JD Wetherspoon’s The Linen Weaver, amid a number of cafes, bars and restaurants, as well as religious publishers and sellers Veritas, with recent sold commercial and investment activity.

No 2 Careys Lane Cork

This investment is listed with agent Amanda Isherwood of Lisney, Cork, with a €320,000 AMV and there’s a current passing rent of €20,000 PA on the ten-year, FRI lease. The lease, negotiated with Ms Isherwood in 2019, incorporates a rent review at the end of the year to market rent, and there’s tenant-only break option at the end of year five, exercisable with six months advance notice in writing.

Close-by, planning permission for change of use to a café/bakery was recently granted at nearby at the far larger No 5 Carey’s Lane/ 17 French Church Street.

That dual-frontage retail unit has been let (via Cohalan Downing) to Dublin-based OffBeat Donuts, set up in 2016 and with outlets in Georges Quay, and Tallaght, in the Capital. The donut shop is set to pay an annual rent of c €45,000, it’s understood, for the c 3,000 sq ft property (previous occupiers included Amite,  and Azure jewelry) with 1,020 sq ft at ground level.

Hot stuff: Former Bully's on Cork's Paul Street, after a small fire in 2001. It has recently sold for c €400,000 with the subsequent business, Uncle Pete's,  relocating to Bantry

Separately, agents Behan Irwin Gosling recently sold the former ‘Uncle Pete’s’ building at 40 Paul Street as an investment, previously occupied for many years by the first Bully's pizza restaurant and subsequently by Uncle Pete's restaurant.

Details: Lisney 021-4275079