Plan for food market at St Andrew’s Church has fallen apart

A plan for Manifesto Market to reopen the long-vacant St Andrew’s Church as a food hall has fallen apart.

Manifesto and landlord Fáilte Ireland fell out, and Manifesto walked away, co-founder Martin Barry said Tuesday, making it the second company to do so in recent years.

Meanwhile, the historic church, centrally located on Suffolk Street in Dublin 2, with a stream of tourists walking by and visiting the Molly Malone statue, remains vacant.

“Two tenants had the building, two tenants had made plans for it, and two tenants withdrew – I mean, this tells you something,” Barry said Tuesday.

“The building’s been empty for 10 years. To point the finger at anyone other than themselves [Fáilte Ireland] would be a mistake,” Barry said.

Fáilte Ireland did not respond directly to queries sent late Tuesday morning about why this latest plan has fallen apart.

“Currently Fáilte Ireland is undertaking conservation works to secure the integrity of the building,” a spokesperson said. “Once they are complete, we will then go out to market seeking a tenant for the building.”

The Department of Tourism hasn’t responded to queries sent late Tuesday morning about whether it has concerns about how long the building has been left vacant.

Local independent Councillor Mannix Flynn said Tuesday that the council and the central government have failed to properly develop the area – including this church.

“You’ve got this great possibility here, and it’s just fucking boarded up,” Flynn said.

Big plans

St Andrew’s Church was “absorbed into the Fáilte Ireland property portfolio” in 2012, according to the Fáilte Ireland spokesperson. Property records say it was February 2014.

Fáilte Ireland moved out of the building in 2015, and it was put on the market for prospective tenants in 2016.

In 2018, Mink Fusion Ltd got planning permission from Dublin City Council to change the use of the building to a food hall.

Mink Fusion Ltd is owned by Cloud Action Ltd, which is owned by Treasure Trail Holdings Ltd, which is owned by Michael Wright, with an address in Sutton.

Wright hasn’t responded to a query about why that deal fell apart, sent via the Wright Group on Tuesday.

Estate agents Cushman & Wakefield advertised for proposals for the 20,000 sq ft property in 2022. That’s when Manifesto Market got involved.

In 2023, the company entered into an agreement with Fáilte Ireland for Manifesto to do up the building and open it as a food hall.

“We had the ability to create 300 jobs and bring 14 great independent restaurants into the space,” Barry said. “We’ve done it before in other cities. We know how to do this.”

Manifesto Market operates food halls in Berlin and Prague.

Broken down

In Barry’s telling, the deal fell apart over the question of who was going to fix up the building, how fast, and whether Manifesto should pay rent while it was happening.

The planning permission Mink Fusion got in 2018 was due to expire in May 2024.

So Barry knew he needed to move fast to get the work “substantially” complete by then, he says.

To speed things up to make that happen, he says his company negotiated a deal with Fáilte Ireland where Manifesto would do both the “landlord and conservation works” as well as the “fit out” of the building.

And while Fáilte Ireland said it would not reduce his rent in exchange for doing these conservation and landlord works, they agreed that Fáilte Ireland would reimburse Manifesto for them, Barry said.

Only after Manifesto started sending the cost estimates and final tender documents, Fáilte Ireland said this arrangement wasn’t going to work, it had to do the conservation and landlord works itself.

Fáilte Ireland proposed that Manifesto could move in and do the fit-out simultaneously, then open the food market.

This slowed the project, meaning the Manifesto would have to apply for new planning permission from the council, Barry said – which it did, in January 2024.

It also led to a dispute between Manifesto and Fáilte Ireland over when Manifesto should pay the deposit on the space, and when it should be paying rent, Barry said.

Manifesto sank €700,000 into developing this project, before the deal broke down, Barry said.

“It was probably one of the best projects I would ever have done and so it’s very painful to back out of it,” he said.

What’s next

On Tuesday morning, there was scaffolding on St Andrew’s Church.

Barry said Fáilte Ireland is proceeding with the landlord and conservation works, and plans to go out to the market again in the first quarter of 2025, to look for a new tenant.

There’s plenty of work to be done on the building before it’s ready to occupy, Barry says.

There were fire-escape hatches in the roof which were left open for long periods, letting the weather in, he says.

“There was water pouring into the building, and birds and animals and stuff living in it,” he says.

And if the plan is still to reopen the building as a food hall, there’s a need to find a new tenant, who will apply for a new planning permission.

Barry says Fáilte Ireland’s loss of two tenants could make it harder to find a third.

“When they remarket the building, they’re going to go to the market and say, ‘We’ve lost two tenants and we’d like someone new to take this on,’” he said.

Meanwhile, the building – already vacant for years – will remain vacant longer.