Shopaholics of a peculiar sort flocked to the Jervis shopping centre last week. Yes, you heard right—this isn’t your average sale on shoes; it was up for grabs in not-so-silent whispers.
Thirteen eager first-round offers were flung at the Dublin city centre mall, quietly put on the market by its owners, Paddy McKillen and Padraig Drayne, who clearly subsisted on the principle that if you can’t sell it, just let it marinate for a while. Who doesn’t love a bit of suspense in real estate?
This charming shopping centre is the last roguish child of the 1990s, born into the world when McKillen, Drayne, and their good buddy Paschal Taggart decided the mall needed a good test drive. It’s almost nostalgic, one of the few centres still owned by its creators, flexing its gym memberships from three decades ago.
The Sunday Times has reported that bidders included the Comer Group, all the cool kids, like US property investor Hines, Peter Horgan’s Lugus Capital, and Patron Capital, alongside David Goddard’s Lanthorn—clearly a motley crew of retail enthusiasts ready to throw their wallets into the fray. Because nothing says success quite like a competitive auction for a building filled with overpriced lattes and tiny shoes.
Following this literary spectacle, intense bidding for Marlet’s illustrious trio of retail parks—yes, there’s a trio!—in Dublin, Louth, and Tipperary attracted ten initial bids, thus proving that retail, dear friends, is staging a comeback. Our stage is set with glittering accomplishments such as half the value of all deals in just the first three months attributed to retail. Take that, gloom and doom of Covid!
And the stage has been further graced by Realty Income, that gallant US firm that seems to believe shopping is the new stock market, pouring nearly a billion dollars into retail parks, including an audacious €220 million snagging over eight parks from Oaktree Capital. Forget your Bitcoin—where’s the thrill in virtual currencies when you can own a physical park that smells of popcorn and detergent?
Don’t let the pandemic fool you; the death of bricks-and-mortar retail was greatly exaggerated. Like a phoenix rising from its own ashes or a teenager reappearing at the family dinner table after a long night out, retail is back and appears to be thriving. In its latest quarterly report, AIB revealed that in-store spending has risen by an astonishing 2 percent compared to last year, proving that some of us still enjoy human interaction, sans screens.
Jean McCabe, chief executive of Retail Excellence Ireland (which hilariously sounds like a corporate utopia), emphasizes that customers are rekindling old flames with stores for “the customer experience.” And who wouldn’t? Nothing like elbowing your way through crowds to feel that sweet rush of consumerism.
Now, if you think this shopping renaissance is solely about retail therapy, think again. It’s also about cunning adaptations. Shopping centres are revamping their tenant mixes by adding entertainment venues, enhancing food offerings, and all while playing the “let’s attract more Irish brands” game. Yes, we want our food and our shopping all in one, please!
So what’s the moral of this retail saga? Will the mall survive? Will it thrive? Either way, investors and shoppers alike are ready to snag the next great deal amidst the bustling madness of consumer culture. Welcome back, retail world. As they say in the movies, “The plot thickens!”
