The U.S. government plans to spend nearly $700M acquiring the former Jury’s hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin, and building a new embassy there.

The State Department notified Congress on 11 December that it intends to buy the former Jury's Hotel in Ballsbridge for about $171M, demolish it and construct new embassy buildings on the site.

According to a note sent to Congress, the total costs of acquiring and demolishing the existing building and designing a new premises will come to around $688.8M, The Associated Press reported, which forms part of a commitment to establish a long-term presence in the area and strengthen diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Ireland.

The new building on the old Jury’s site would include the embassy, a residence for U.S. Marine guards, support facilities and parking, the notice to Congress says. Although it did not provide an estimate for when the project would be due for completion, it estimated that there would be 189 employees at the new embassy by 2028.

Planning permission was granted in December 2022 to split the site, which houses the former Jury's Hotel and the prestigious Lansdowne Place residential development.

As a result of that decision, a fence was erected to separate the former hotel from the residential block, while permission was also granted to cut the underground car park link between the residential development on the corner of Lansdowne Road, where Jury's Hotel was located.

The decision was a key security requirement for U.S. officials and comes after Dublin city councillors approved a State Department request in 2022 to rezone the hotel, which closed in 2019 so it could be redeveloped for a new embassy.

The 4.2-acre site is close to the existing 1960s-era U.S. Embassy, which requires major reconstruction, as the State Department said the building “is well beyond its useful life, is too small for our operational needs, and is not functional in its layout.”

While U.S. authorities are thought to have reached an agreement to buy the former Jury's Hotel from developer Chartered Land, it is expected to remain in its current embassy building for up to 10 years until the construction of the new premises is complete.

The Ballsbridge site was sold to developer Sean Dunne in 2005 for €240M. He unveiled ambitious plans to turn Ballsbridge into the equivalent of London's Knightsbridge, but locals objected to the scale of his proposed mixed-use development.

After the property bubble burst in 2008, it was not until 2015 that developer Chartered Land acquired the site from Dunne's lender, Ulster Bank. It developed Lansdowne Place, the most expensive apartment complex in the country, while in 2021 the U.S. Embassy secured the option to buy the Jury's site.