The McCullough Pigott store has permission to be extended and is in a prime retail area, writes Jack Fagan

ANOTHER PRIME retail building is to be offered for sale in Dublin city centre.

The McCullough Pigott store at the western end of Suffolk Street is expected to make about €10-€11 million when it is sold by private treaty through Savills HOK.

Number 25 Suffolk Street is about 50 metres off Grafton Street and is opposite the Habitat and Avoca outlets which have been largely responsible for the greatly increased number of shoppers visiting the street and surrounding area over the past few years.

The owners of number 25 recently secured planning permission to carry out fairly radical alterations to the building which would increase the retail area to 340sq m (3,680sq ft) on the ground floor and 275sq m (2,960sq ft) at first floor level.

Spacious floor plates like these seldom become available in the Grafton Street area and when they do they invariably attract a higher than average rent.

The vendors are considering both an outright sale of the building to an owner-occupier or an investor or, alternatively, they may opt to rent it to one of a number of well known traders looking for larger than usual retail space.

Michael Clarke of Savills HOK believes that a rent of €650,000 to €750,000 could be achieved once the building is extended to provide an overall floor area of 1,064sq m (11,452sq ft).

Two doors away, the former AA building, which has a total floor area of 636sq m (6,845sq ft) was recently refurbished and let to Carroll's Gifts at a rent of €625,000.

This equates to a Zone A rent of €7,104 per sq m (€660 per sq ft), a long way behind the reported €13,751 per sq m (€1,275 per sq ft) recently agreed for the letting of a new Grafton Street store in the former Grafton Arcade alongside Marks Spencer to Tommy Hilfiger.