A bid made by Dublin City Council (DCC) below the guide price of €1.5 million to purchase Sandymount’s Martello tower in Dublin 4 was unsuccessful, with the monument instead being purchased by a private individual.
The protected structure and recorded monument, which has lain vacant for more than two decades, has recently been sold.
A private individual purchased the tower for more than the guide price of €1.5 million, according to a source familiar with the details of the sale.
Several councillors had called for the council to buy the structure after it came on the market, with council officials also eager to acquire the tower, saying it was an “important bit of heritage in the city”.
Before making the unsuccessful bid, options outlined by the council and seen by The Irish Times detailed three potential uses, including retaining it as a historical monument, which would see its 1980s three-storey extension demolished.
Another option was the refurbishment of the tower and its extension for use as tea rooms, while a third possibility would have seen it retained as a historical monument with stand-alone new-build tea rooms and a “possible link to the tower”.
Council officials inspected the tower earlier this summer, describing it in internal correspondence as an “iconic structure”, though a Dublin city valuer warned the extension would require “complete modernisation or demolition”.
This was something he believed the previous owner was “not prepared to take on”, adding that it would cost a “fortune” to bring it to current building standards.
The valuer also believed the guide price was “excessive”, correspondence obtained through the Freedom of Information Act shows.
In an update in June, the city valuer told DCC chief executive Richard Shakespeare the council had made what it considered to be a “very fair and reasonable offer, if somewhat below the guide price”.
However, estate agent Colliers advised that three bids had been made and the council’s was “unsuccessful”.
The structure was one of 28 defensive towers built between 1804 and 1805, stretching from Bray to Balbriggan, to protect against the threat of a French invasion during the Napoleonic wars.
Sandymount’s Martello tower became a popular cafe in the 1960s, before an extension was added two decades later, the large windows of which have been covered by shutters for years.
Property developer Robert Noonan had plans for a restaurant at the site, hoping to partner with Peter Langan, the Irish restaurateur behind Langan’s Brasserie, a celebrity hotspot in London.
Langan died at the age of 47, weeks after suffering injuries in a fire at his UK home in 1988, and the project never came to fruition after his death.
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Until recently, it was owned by Michael Doyle of the Doyle Hotels family. He sought to convert the space into a microbrewery, though he failed to secure planning permission in 1999.
Green Party councillor Hazel Chu, who was one of several councillors to call on both the State and the council to purchase the site for public use, said it was a “large missed opportunity”.
“It’s a piece of our heritage and a piece of our history. We really should be keeping it for public use,” she said.
When the site went on the market, Minister of State Emer Higgins said the Office of Public Works, had “no plans” to buy the tower, though Chu argues the State “should have stepped in to buy it”.
“There’s always a ‘we’ll leave it to someone else’,” she said.
“It’s not something the State couldn’t have afforded. It wasn’t a price tag of €20 million. €1.5 million is a lot of money still, but it wasn’t a large price tag for something that could be put back into use.”