Cork's Flying Enterprise complex comes up for sale for €5.3m
Flying enterprises: the Courtyard indoor/outdoor section of the overall Flying Enterprise complex on half an acre with frontage to four city streets. Guide price all-in is €5.3m.
A major Cork city centre licensed premises and associated businesses all in a city block by the Events Centre site and key Cork city centre tourist attractions, fronted by The Flying Enterprise bar, has been put up for sale with a €5.3m price tag.
Because of the scale of the business/property mix, the setting and scope for more it’s expected to attract national as well as local buyer interest.
The entire complex, including the Courtyard Bar and outdoor entertainment area and former CBS Sullivans Quay school building, with rental income from a mix of uses, runs to half an acre by the south channel of the River Lee and South Gate Bridge, a stone’s throw from the long-stalled Events Centre site and the ex-Revenue Commissioners river-fronting site, both controlled by BAM and also currently undeveloped.
The immaculate Flying Enterprise complex has been in O’Shea family hands since 1980, with owners Finbarr and Dolly O’Shea overseeing expansion, upgrades and additional uses such as the Quay News newsagency, deli and off-licence, as well as running the bar/restaurant business over intervening decades.
It goes to the open market this week as a going concern, earning €185,000 pa in additional rental income, with joint selling agents Cohalan Downing in Cork and Lisney’s licensed sales division in Dublin, who describe it as “an iconic long established licensed premises with further development potential and significant rental income.”
The mix includes the rebuilt four-storey Flying Enterprise bar (named by previous owners after a famous 1952 shipwreck), a first-floor restaurant, five overhead apartments, the Courtyard deck area and the enclosed indoor/outdoor entertainment space, called the Quarter Deck, capable of holding 700 for parties.
Comprising the majority of a city block with frontage to four streets, it’s at the foot of Barrack Street. Its Sullivan’s Quay section faces the Grand Parade and end of the South Mall, and is just 200 metres from the visitor attraction Elizabeth Fort, with St Fin Barre’s Cathedral also very close, on the route from the city centre to UCC on College Road. Also close is the Nano Nagle Visitor Centre and the School of Architecture.
Cohalan Downing agent Margaret Kelleher said its many facets would make the Flying Enterprise operation very attractive to ambitious operators who’d see considerable further scope to capitalise on entertainment, bar, food and tourist/visitor trade while also having the benefit of €185,000 pa in rental income straight off.
That income – separate to trading income - comes from Munster Technological University, who lease classroom space in the three-storey Courtyard building, for €80,000 pa, and there is €105,000 pa income stream from the five apartments above the Flying Enterprise. MTU also own a building across the River Lee by the pedestrian Nano Nagle Bridge, looking down the South Mall.
There’s planning permission secured for the Sullivans Quay/ Sober Lane section of the former CBS school on Sullivans Quay for a function room and new entrances on Sober Lane.
Expressions of interest in lots or as an entire are canvassed by April 10 for the owners the O’Shea family, retiring after 45 years at the helm of their Flying Enterprise.
