GPO comes off market as sale deal bites dust

Date Published: 12-Aug-2010

By Dara Bradley

An Post has suspended plans to sell its flagship Galway City building – the GPO on Eglinton Street – after discussions with a ‘preferred buyer’ collapsed just weeks before agreement was finalised.

An Post were in advanced stages of talks with the potential buyer of the three-quarter acre site, which two years ago was widely believed to be worth in the region of €25 million, because of its position close to Galway City’s main shopping thoroughfare.

In August 2008, An Post was within a few weeks of ‘sealing the deal’ with the preferred developer but the deal subsequently fell through as the recession gripped the country.

When that deal failed to materialise, the property remained for sale but failed to attract any genuine interest and yesterday a spokesperson for An Post confirmed to the Galway City Tribune that the building has been taken off the market and there are no longer any short or medium term plans to sell.

Local property experts now estimate that the building could have lost more than half of its value since the property peak and would now only be worth less than €10 million due to the dramatic fall in house and property prices and the general perilous state of the economy nationally.

“An Post were close to the final stages of a deal (to sell) but with changes in the economic circumstances and the downturn that didn’t happen. The building is no longer for sale. It is a thriving post office and will continue to be so for as long as possible. Our customers seem to like it and it will continue to operate as a post office but this will be reviewed at some stage down the road,” an An Post spokesperson said.

As part of the deal, An Post had hoped to move to a new city centre premises owned by the preferred buyer, where it would pay a nominal or ‘peppercorn’ rent of €1 per annum.

Developers had earmarked a shopping centre for the Eglinton site, which also has access through Abbeygate Street (beside Central Park nightclub) and at William Street (beside Matt O’Flaherty’s).

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune