Owners of Newmarket building ask for permission to drop market space

The owners of a building on Newmarket in Dublin 8 have circled back around to apply for permission to drop the market space from the ground floor.

The Eight Building is a four-storey office block on the southern edge of Newmarket, west of the Teeling Distillery.

The site was once home to the Green Door Market, and hosted a collection of Sunday markets, including the Dublin Flea Market, until they were swept out with the ongoing redevelopment of the square.

In 2017, Newmarket Partnership Limited – the owner at the time – was granted permission to redevelop the site.

Markets were an important part of the new plans, said Matthew Creedon, who was involved at the time. “That is the spirit of the area. It’s Newmarket. We have zero intention of getting rid of that.”

But the Eight Building has changed hands since.

On 16 October, Patrizia Eight Building Limited filed for permission to change the use of the ground-floor from market space to “convenience retail”, the second time the request has been made.

Daniel McLaughlin, a senior director at CBRE, the leasing agent for Patrizia, said they have tried to find an operator but the size of the space and the configuration means it just isn’t viable for a market.

“They don’t locate in a 6,000sqft block of space below a modern office block,” he said. “It’s just not a market location.”

On Tuesday, Deirdre O’Sullivan, a co-owner of the Green Door Market, which is now based in an industrial estate in Bluebell, said they hadn’t been approached in recent times about going back to Newmarket.

But there would be advantages to a return, she said. “When we were there, we had an incredible walk-in trade.”

Other local market operators, Irish Village Markets and ScorchioHQ – the first of whom had already considered the space, and the second who said that they hadn’t – said that they would be eager to look more closely at it.

McLaughlin of CBRE said that just because an operator, on foot of a media query, says that they would like to look at it, it doesn’t mean that the space would suit the operator, or that they will take it on.

The owner would be delighted to have a conversation with the likes of the Green Door Market if they are interested, he said. “But they haven’t approached us.”

“At the end of the day, we’ve been trying to let it for five years,” he said. “It’s not that anyone has come forward and said, I want that space.”

Patrizia hasn’t responded to queries about the market space and the application to change its use, sent by email on Friday morning.

Once upon a time

A masterplan filed with its planning application in 2017 said that architects for the developer had, as part of the design process, looked into configurations for cooperative food markets.

They pointed to the Park Slope Food Co-op in New York, as inspiration.

The planning application first proposed an indoor market space on the ground-floor of 265sqm. Planners rebuffed that.

Green Door Market had been trading from a space that was 770sqm (about 8,300sqft), said O’Sullivan in her submission at the time.

Newmarket Partnership revised the plans, which were approved with an indoor market space of 615sqm (about 6,600sqft).

Permission granted, the site was sold on, and developed by Revelate Capital and Valorem Investment Partners.

In 2019, residents said they were deeply suspicious when an application for some changes to the plans, this time filed by Newmarket RVAM 2 Ltd, relabelled the indoor market space as retail.

On the request of planners, the developers changed the annotation back, and said they hadn’t been seeking to alter it.

In January 2022, Newmarket RVAM 2 Ltd applied for permission to change the “market space” to “convenience retail”, so they could lease it out to a Centra.

The Centra wouldn’t be a normal Centra though, the application said. It would be tailored to a “market-oriented store layout and concept”, said a planning document.

Dublin City Council, and later An Bord Pleanála, refused that though. The change was premature as the owners hadn’t yet proven that it was unworkable as a market space, said An Bord Pleanála.

This time around

In October 2022, the German fund Patrizia said it had invested €60 million in The Eight Building for its clients.

And, in October this year, Patrizia Eight Building Limited filed again for permission for a change of use to the building’s ground floor.

A leasing report in the application, drawn up by CBRE, said they had again tried to market the ground-floor and there just wasn’t any interest in it.

The historic Iveagh Markets, and a new market hall planned for the Guinness Quarter, are a much better fit, the report says.

Operators of food halls across Europe – such as Time Out and Manifesto Markets – are looking for much larger spaces, the report says.

Stephen Coyne, an economic development officer for the South Central Area at Dublin City Council, said there is a challenge at the moment for the council.

There are policies in the development plan to incorporate community uses, art studios, civic spaces into private developments, said Coyne.

But, how does the policy translate in reality, he said. “You can build a space. But you have to build the right kind of space for people.”

They may not always be built to the right designs for a particular end-user, he says. “You just don’t always get things right.”

The council is recognising this, he says. The council recently put out a “Building Culture” toolkit, to help guide developers on how to design art spaces for example.

There is also a question about how much the rent is for places, said Coyne.

The Eight Building is a nice building, he said. “The market rate that they’re looking for is probably much higher than the classic markets would be interested in.”

The CBRE leasing report for the Eight Building does mention local operators approached during this year’s round of marketing.

It doesn’t mention Green Door Market. They weren’t approached this time around, said McLaughlin, the director at CBRE.

The report does mention Baste and Irish Village Markets.

McLaughlin says that CBRE logs show they did have contact with someone at Baste who had told them that they were looking for a space that was more “raw”.

Andy Noonan, owner of Baste BBQ and co-founder of The Big Grill Festival and Me Auld Flower Food Festival, says he wasn’t aware of any conversation about the space.

He hasn’t talked to them himself, he said, and definitely hasn’t had any conversation like that this year.

Baste closed in summer 2021, and they have since rebranded as ScorchioHQ, said Noonan.

“We are looking for a place to do a market and a couple of venues for kind of smaller food events,” he says. “I’d jump at an opportunity to do a market down there, but I have not been contacted.”

He hasn’t seen what the space is like now though, he says.

Des Vallelly, of Irish Village Markets, said they had had some correspondence with CBRE about the space earlier this year. That didn’t go anywhere, but they are planning to have another look, he says.

Meanwhile, O’Sullivan, of the Green Door Market, said she would be attracted back to Newmarket by the footfall.

They used to get people on their way from dropping kids at school, people just passing through, she said. “It was just fantastic.”

They don’t get that in Bluebell, she says. “Because we’re out of the city, there was very little choice in where we could go, when we got our notice to move.”

McLaughlin, of CBRE, says he just doesn’t think the space is going to be viable for a market operator and that they are open to alternative uses, such as leisure or retail.

Across Newmarket, construction is still underway. The square itself – for which the councillors agreed a makeover plan in 2017 which would include electricity points for stallholders to enable an outdoor market – hasn’t yet been remade.

In March, a council presentation said that resourcing in the council’s Roads Design Division,  and the construction around the square, meant that they hadn’t been able to build out the public realm yet.

The council has a smaller, interim scheme, planned.

On the plot beside the Eight Building, scaffolding – draped in blue netting – caged a giant build-to-rent block. A red forklift truck drove slowly by.

A Premier Inn corners a strip on the northside of the square.

Beside it is a giant complex, the build-to-rent block at Newmarket Yards, with glassy spaces on its ground floor – two empty retail and leisure units, and a Tesco Express.