Groundhog day as 7.2-acre Rochestown Cork site back for sale for €3.75m

Five years on, a lot, yet little, has changed at valuable Clarke's Hill development site previous eyed by nursing home operator Aperee and now wide open to varied uses, including residential

Thu, 05 Jun, 2025 - 07:58

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

THERE is a touch of groundhog day in the arrival of this prime Rochestown Cork site being for sale. Beneath the basic outline is a protracted saga of plans thwarted by a variety of circumstances and financial failings.

Listed with agents Savills is a 7.2-acre development site at the foot of Clarke’s Hill in Cork’s Rochestown, guided at €3.75m, and with a projected appeal to home builders, as well as nursing-home operators.

It’s offered for a family linked with the property for the best part of 50 years, though this is the second time it has been offered, after a gap of five years, with the same estate agents, and once more for the same vendors, the Purcell family, and at the same price point, after considerable tangles and wrangling.

Will some of the same bidders from 2020 re-emerge now, to re-engage, as it resurfaces? It’s got a stellar address, Clarke’s Hill, just two kms from Douglas and at the foot of the hill now dominated by the 800-home Mount Oval development built by the O’Flynn Group over a circa 20-year span.

Might there be another repeat? Might a ‘new’ nursing home survivor feature, back in the bidding this time around? Aperee were the purchasers in 2020, paying 20% over the then guide price of €3.75m — or €4.75m — for the entire, the development land, and an unoccupied c 1970s, 2,500 sq ft family home in a prime position.

Aperee signed contracts and the sale of the original Purcell family house closed out as planned.

However, Aperee never got to close out on the sale of the land portion, the most valuable.

The ambitious investor-led nursing-home operator Aperee and subsidiary Blackbee had planned a portfolio of €250m in the senior care sector, before hitting financial and regulatory hurdles shortly after agreeing the Rochestown site purchase.

However, it did get planning on it after a Bord Pleanala appeal, for a 100-bed nursing home and 47 independent residential units, consisting of 27 apartments in two blocks and 20 townhouses.

Meanwhile, the 1970s-era family home on a portion of the 7.3 acres, and which had successfully sold, was bought back from Aperee’s receiver after being put for sale last year, acquired by the Purcell family to reassemble the original site outline, for a purchase sum close to €550,000.

Five years on, after drama and deals, here it is again.

Selling once more are Peter O’Meara and James O’Donovan, of Savills, who say home-builder interest is expected again, with inquiries and bidding from several in the resident sector five years ago up to the €3.8m mark, before two competing nursing-home operators drove bidding on a further €1m to the eventual sale figure agreed at €4.75m.

Inquiries may also come from the wider nursing-home sector, again, given the grant of planning in situ and the demographic need for purpose-built accommodation for older citizens.

The level of demand is seen in sales of a number of former Aperee nursing homes in Munster and Galway. (Coincidentally, four go for sale by tender today with agents Cohalan Downing, with very active pre-tender interest.)

On the residential side, the 7.2-acre site (the present house is likely to be demolished, and is in very poor order now) could take a scheme of up to 100 high-quality/upper-market end units, with access from the foot of Clarke’s Hill by the junction with the Rochetown Rd, and has a pedestrian link on to the Rochestown Rd near a bus stop (routes 216 and 223).

Meanwhile, a detached 1930s home, Beechvale Lawn on 1.8 acres at the same road junction, is currently under offer, close to its €1.6m guide price, via Sherry FitzGerald.