McGarrell Reilly pays over €8m for former Siemens site in south Dublin

Developer Sean Reilly is understood to have paid over €8 million for the former Siemens building and site at Sandyford Industrial Estate in south Dublin. The McGarrell Reilly founder’s off-market purchase of the property from the Dublin-based McCormack family’s investment vehicle Alanis Capital, which is understood to have been agreed in recent weeks, looks set to clear the way for the long-awaited delivery of apartments there.

While the site’s outgoing owners had sought to develop 71 apartments along with a 20-storey office tower soon after they acquired it for €20 million in 2006, that plan unsurprisingly fell by the wayside with the onset of the financial crisis.

Before offering the site for sale, Alanis sought and secured planning permission from An Bord Pleanála in 2022 for an entirely different scheme, the composition of which reflects the acute need for housing and the post-pandemic fall-off in demand for offices.

The approval, which was given under the terms of the now-defunct Strategic Housing Development (SHD) or fast-track planning process, provides for the construction of 190 build-to-rent apartments distributed across two blocks ranging in height up to 15 storeys along with two floors of office accommodation and a range of tenant amenities including a concierge area, co-working and meeting rooms, and a gym, restaurant and cafe accessible to the public.

The former Siemens premises occupies a prime position at the junction of Ballymoss Road and Blackthorn Avenue in what is now known as the Sandyford Business District (SBD). Located directly across the road from the Stillorgan and Sandyford stops on the Luas green line, the property sits immediately adjacent to Richmond Homes’s newly developed 564-unit Sandyford Central apartment scheme and Ires Reit’s 189 apartments at Rockbrook South Central.