Lone Star is considering allocating a major portion of its €200M Adamstown Town Centre development to rented residential apartments in what could be one of Ireland’s biggest build-to-rent developments.
In April Lone Star appointed Quintain, the London-based developer it owns, to manage its Adamstown Town Centre scheme.
Quintain is now weighing the options for the site, which are very likely to involve at least some of the apartments being allocated for rent, and possibly all of them. They would be managed by Tipi, the rented residential brand Quintain created for its 7,000-unit scheme in Wembley, London.
Adamstown Town Centre, to the west of Dublin, will comprise 1,000 high-density apartments as well as a district centre, retail, child care facilities and pedestrian space on a 915K SF site around the train station.
“It hasn't been decided, but we are looking at a range of tenures,” Quintain Executive Director of Development Jason Margrave told Bisnow. “This phase of the scheme is 1,000 high-density residential apartments, and that is exactly what we are doing at Wembley Park, where we are building apartments for rent. We have the Tipi brand and there is a natural synergy when you are looking at Adamstown.”
The build-to-rent sector in Dublin is in its infancy, but it is growing. At Cherrywood Hines and APG are building 1,200 apartments for rent with an end value of €450M. In September Patrizia bought two build-to-rent schemes in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown totalling 319 apartments for €130M. Kennedy Wilson has said it wants to build up a 3,000-unit Irish rented residential portfolio.
“If you look at Dublin there is a lot of talk about build-to-rent but not many people delivering it at scale,” Margrave said. “It’s a huge opportunity for Quintain and Tipi to bring a professionally managed landlord and brand to the city.
“What we’ve now got to do is work up a detailed planning application for that zone, and when you work that out you work out what tenures of housing are right for the scheme.”
Margrave said that if the entire scheme was allocated to rented residential it could be built in one phase, given the company’s experience of developing large projects at Wembley Park.
Lone Star acquired a 250-acre development site at Adamstown in 2015 when it paid €500M for a loan portfolio from Ulster Bank in a joint venture with Cairn Homes. The entire Adamstown site has the potential for 6,000 homes. Lone Star has already delivered around 550 homes for sale at a cost of around €125M.
That loan portfolio acquisition gives Lone Star and Quintain access to a huge potential build-to-rent pipeline. As well as the Adamstown site the deal included sites in Blackrock and Portmarnock where there is the potential to build another 14,000 homes.
Lone Star and Quintain are also one of the bidders on the redevelopment of part of the St James’s Gate Guinness site.
