This 1,250 acre hotel and golf course built by a pharmacy tycoon is on the market
The Farnham Estate was put into receivership after its owner spent €85m developing the property.
THE RADISSON FARNHAM Estate hotel in Cavan is on the market after being put into receivership by bad bank Nama.
Savills is handling the sale of the 1,250 acre estate on behalf of the receiver, setting a guide price of €26 million on the property.
The potential sale price is a fraction of the reported €85 million its owner, Roy McCabe, who founded the McCabe’s Pharmacy chain, spent developing the property and accompanying 18-hole golf course. He bought the estate for €6.35 million in 2001.
The 158-room hotel contains a restaurant and bar and hosted 121 weddings in 2015. It also has a 40,000 sq ft Heinz Schletterer-designed luxury spa with 19 treatment rooms, sauna, aroma baths, gym and a laconium – a dry sweating room.
Farnham also contains hundreds of acres of woodland and the Jeff Howes-designed, championship golf course.
Tom Barrett, head of hotels and leisure at Savills, said the property will be attractive to a number of buyers.
“Farnham Estate is one of the largest and most profitable hotel resorts in Ireland. Combined with immense heritage, it will appeal to both domestic and international buyers”.
The most recent accounts for the companies behind the resort, spa and golf course show only the latter, a firm named Derrygid, delivered a profit in 2014.
It returned €3.5 million for its owners, while the companies behind the hotel and spa, and estate common areas, lost a combined €2.6 million. All have now been placed into receivership.
The accounts also show the hotel and estate’s holding company under McCabe, Behey Ltd, had debts of more than €55 million falling due within a year, which a note attached to the documents warned could endanger its ability to continue trading.
Until 2014 the parent company also included the family’s profitable pharmacy business, but those operations were transferred out of the group that year.
Organic
Elsewhere, one of Ireland’s largest organic farms is for sale in Donegal – with a guide price of €17 million. The Grianan Estate is owned by the Donegal Investment Group, which runs a range of potato and other businesses.
The roughly 2,400 acre property – which includes a 500 acre lake – consists mainly of land reclaimed from Lough Swilly, making it particularly fertile and suitable for all farming enterprises.
The Grianan Estate
For the past 10 years, the farm has been producing over 3,000 tonnes of organic produce a year including milk, vegetables and cereals.
Various Irish household brands are sourced from the farm, which is the group’s main property asset.
The value of large farms in Ireland’s north and west fell last year, as uncertainty around milk prices and other issues weighed on the sector.
Includes reporting by Paul Hosford and Peter Bodkin.
