Property developer makes €70m-plus bid to buy car park beside Dublin Airport

Pat Crean of the Marlet Property Group recently made a €70 million-plus bid for the former QuickPark car park near Dublin Airport, which the airport’s chief executive described as “the best car park in the whole campus”.

The QuickPark site on the Swords Road, currently owned by Gerry Gannon, was the subject of fierce bidding over the past year, including from DAA, the State-owned company that runs Dublin Airport.

DAA’s bid was blocked by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), the State’s competition watchdog, which has led to a revival of interest from other bidders, including Euro Car Parks owner David Cullen, and an Irish investment company called Innovest. Another interested party was represented by Joe O’Leary of BMOL Financial.

Mr Crean, who declined to speak to The Irish Times, was an underbidder in the original process, according to market sources, and subsequently made a fresh offer on the car park after the CCPC blocked DAA’s bid.

It is not clear how much Mr Crean bid for the 6,200-space facility, but according to the same sources, the sum he offered was a premium on the initial €70-million guide price for the car park.

However, to date no deal has been done for the car park, which has led to fresh concerns over Dublin Airport’s ability to handle the demand for car parking over the busy summer months.

In a hearing of the Oireachtas’s transport and communications committee on Wednesday, Kenny Jacobs, the chief executive of DAA, said: “We’re stuck for car park spaces. I wish we had more for the summer but we won’t have more for the summer.”

Mr Jacobs insisted that it “won’t be carnage” and said that, while the airport’s short-term car park is sold out for this weekend, “if you’re going away on that classic one-week or two-week holiday and you want to get a long-term car park space go on the website and you’ll be able to book and you’ll be able to find one”.

Mr Jacobs said DAA had come close to a deal to lease the site from Mr Gannon to operate it for the months of June and July.

“I’ve met with the owner myself to say could we do a deal to operate the site for two months,” Mr Jacobs said. “We were close to getting a deal done but they’ve withdrawn from that process. I can’t say more than that.”

He added that the owners were “actively still looking to sell it”.

“I hope they do. Because there’s nothing worse than looking out and hearing about people being anxious about car parking and you see tumble weed going across six thousand spaces in what is the best car park in the whole campus.”