What is believed to be the highest price ever offered for a piece of property in Ireland has been announced to the Irish Stock Exchange.
The Jurys Doyle Hotel Group has confirmed it has entered an agreement to sell just under five acres of its hotel complex in Ballsbridge in south Dublin to the builder Sean Dunne.
Mr Dunne has offered €260m for the five-acre site, which is home to Jurys Ballsbridge and another of the group's hotels, The Towers.
Jurys Doyle wants to sell its Ballsbridge hotels because they are inefficient by modern standards, with too few bedrooms occupying too big an area.
There are three hotels in total in the Ballsbridge complex. Jurys and the Towers will be sold, demolished and redeveloped.
The Berkeley Court, to be retained by Jurys, will also be demolished and rebuilt with far more bedrooms.
13 bidders submitted offers for the site after the hotel chain announced a tender process to sell five acres of property there in June.
There has been extensive speculation on how much money property developers would be prepared to pay to redevelop the site for either a residential or a mixed use scheme.
To justify the extraordinary cost, it is inevitable that what will be built there will be high rise and expensive to buy or rent.
However any deal can only be completed with the approval of Jurys Doyle shareholders.
They will meet in September, which would allow the deal to be completed in October.
