With KBC Bank on course to close 11 of its 12 Irish retail branches by the end of this year, agent QRE Real Estate Advisers has been retained to manage the disposal of the bank’s commercial property portfolio.
As part of that process, the bank is seeking to assign the leasehold interest on its principal office in Dublin city centre. Extending to 70,000 sq ft, the subject property occupies a high-profile position at the junction of Sandwith Street Upper and Hogan Place. While the building has served as the headquarters of KBC Bank Ireland since 2004, it will be better known to older generations of Dubliners as Archer’s Garage.
According to local historian Donal Fallon’s “Come Here to Me!” blog, Archer’s Garage took its name from RW Archer, the first man to import Ford cars into Ireland. Archer enjoyed a lifelong love affair with cars which is said to have begun with his attendance at Dublin’s first motorcar show in the RDS in 1907. In1967, and at 90 years of age, Archer was still reportedly working three days a week in the garage.
Following its unauthorised demolition by a developer in 1999, a replica of the Sandwith Street building was constructed in 2004. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage describes the original structure, built in 1946 to the designs of Arnold Hendy, as “a memorable building in the International style, employing Art Deco devices”, before adding that “the reconstruction faithfully replicates the original building and thus memorialises a historic landmark.
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