Last week, an unusual array of shoppers flocked to the Jervis shopping centre, not for sales on shoes but to bid on the whole establishment. Who knew that retail therapy could be so lucrative!
Up to 13 first-round bids were made for the Dublin city centre mall, now available for your purchasing pleasure, courtesy of owners Paddy McKillen and Padraig Drayne. After all, if you can’t sell your shopping centre, why not throw in a “for sale” sign?
Remarkably, this is the first time the shopping centre has been on the market since it burst onto the scene in the 1990s, thanks to McKillen, Drayne, and some guy named Paschal Taggart. It appears to be one of the last bastions of retail nostalgia still standing from that decade—like finding a Blockbuster in a Netflix world.
Among the bidders, esteemed contenders included the Comer Group; the US property investor Hines; Peter Horgan’s Lugus Capital; and Patron Capital, all in a bidding war reminiscent of a high-stakes poker game but without the chips and guacamole. It seems David Goddard’s Lanthorn has also joined the fray, representing a conga line of eager investors.
This auction comes on the heels of some exciting bidding for Marlet’s trio of retail parks in Dublin, Louth, and Tipperary, where an impressive ten bids were recorded. Whether it’s a sign of retail revival or a symptom of buyer’s remorse from the pandemic remains to be seen—particularly since it turns out people love shopping just as much as they love scrolling through Instagram.
For over a year, retail has shone brightly in the property investment world. It seems the grim reaper of the pandemic, which let some people believe retail was about to be canceled like a bad TV show, was just taking an intermission. Recent statistics, however, reveal that in-store spending has risen by 2% compared to last year. Perhaps shoppers realized it’s much harder to try on a pair of jeans through a computer screen.
Jean McCabe, chief executive of Retail Excellence Ireland, weighed in: “Customers are back for the customer experience!” Oh, joy! What a monumental revelation. And retailers, perhaps in a moment of epiphany, have decided to add entertainment venues and food options, allowing them to compete against Netflix and your local café’s free Wi-Fi. Call it a corporate rebranding strategy, or simply survival of the fittest—who really needs to keep up with the Kardashians when you can watch someone struggle to choose a salad dressing in real time?
Brendan McDowell, founder of BPerfect Cosmetics, has opened 13 physical stores across the UK and Ireland and seems unmoved by fears of retail doom. His strategy? Test the waters with pop-up stores! Nothing like going from “oops, this mall is empty” to “let’s negotiate the rent!” Perhaps he should consider a motivational speaking tour on the art of low-risk entrepreneurship.
