After The Tech Crunch: What The Digital Giants Really Did Next In Dublin
After Dublin’s real estate sector spent the best part of a decade riding high on the digital wave, a sudden staff contraction among global tech giants sent a shock wave through the city’s property market.
As news of worldwide redundancies emerged from previously growth-only companies, mostly U.S.-headquartered, the Irish capital braced for its share of the pain and whether it might act as a contagion for the broader Dublin office market.
So what did the tech giants actually do, and how are they occupying their footprints in Dublin? Bisnow took a deep dive beyond the headlines into how digital leaders have reshaped their office space.
"The amount of grey space being listed for sublease and assignment has certainly slowed and the best space is being taken up, albeit slowly,” Colliers Director and Head of Research Kate Ryan said.
“Positively for the office market, a number of big requirements have emerged or are in negotiation, including most notably from Workday. The recent announcement it will not build the new campus as planned paves the way for a 300K SF plus letting, possibly at one of the new speculative schemes in the city centre.”
Ryan also cited examples of subletting activity within the Dublin market, including Intercom subletting circa 40K SF at Cadenza, Earlsfort Terrace to KKR late last year while subletting 40K SF itself at Indeed’s 124-127 St Stephens Green, plus Hubspot’s Dockland Central subletting 44K SF let to Datadog.
“Interestingly while Meta announced they will not be occupying the new blocks in Ballsbridge, this is not being formally marketed at the moment,” she added.
Meta
Meta officially opened its new campus in Ballsbridge Dublin in late 2023. With over 2,000 full-time employees, the move to Ballsbridge marked the new home for its international HQ, with additional sites in Meath, where its data centre is located, and Cork, which is home to Reality Labs.
Meta originally leased 870K SF in Ballsbridge in the fourth quarter of 2018, but later announced it would not occupy the new blocks, circa 380K SF, known as Fibonacci Square, a development on the site of the former AIB Bankcentre. Meta had signed a 25-year lease on the property but it has now instructed agents to sublet the blocks, although this is not formally on the market at present.
The company already occupies another part of the Ballsbridge campus, and as part of the move, the company surrendered the leases at its former headquarters at 4 & 5 Grand Canal Square of circa 250K SF.
Meta exited the Beckett Building, now on sale via agent Colliers, for circa €35M, although it remains responsible for its annual €5.75M rent and all outgoings until the break option of its lease on 31 July 2027. The current rent equates to €29.30 per SF, excluding the building’s car-parking spaces.
TikTok
TikTok’s main office is at the 202K SF Sorting Office in the city’s south docklands, which has the capacity to accommodate 2,000 people.
TikTok had also been in negotiations for the Marlet Property Group’s Shipping Office development on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay but instead inked a deal for the nearby Tropical Fruit Warehouse. It now occupies 85K SF of office accommodation at the six-storey riverfront building. The Irish Times reported that the company had committed to a long-term lease at a rental level of €60 per SF with the scheme’s developer and landlord, Iput Real Estate. TikTok’s Irish operations now have an overall footprint of circa 300K SF.
TikTok was also to have taken over the majority of the Dublin office of X, having agreed to sublease on the Fenian Street premises for up to five years to take four of the five floors at Cumberland House. However, this deal did not go through.
Google/Alphabet
Barrow Street is the main office campus for the Alphabet/Google business, home to 3,000 people, which opened in 2013 with a combined 506K SF. The Google EU Headquarters is a quartet of structures consisting of a 14-storey-high Google Docks building along with the Gasworks House, Gordon House and One Grand Canal, all located in the docklands district. The campus includes five restaurants, 42 microkitchens, 400 informal and formal meeting spaces, communication hubs, a conference, learning and development centre, tech centres, game rooms, fitness centres and a swimming pool.
Boland Mills at Boland’s Quay opened in September 2023, after Google bought the site in 2018 for €300M, and is the engineering hub for its Dublin office, with 1,000 staff.
Google has a number of other buildings around the city, including South Bank House, The Warehouse, Two Grand Canal Plaza, The Foundry, and Montevetro. It also occupies space at The Chase and Blackthorn Building in Sandyford Business District and Eastpoint Business Park. The company employs over 5,000 people across Ireland.
Progress is also underway on the expansion of the Treasury Building on Grand Canal Street, which Google purchased in 2020. The new scheme comprises two independent buildings that can connect at multiple levels. It will be renamed Bolands Bakery upon completion, according to a recent update by Google regional director of workspace design and delivery, Michael Conaghan.
In addition, Ronan Group is constructing the adjacent Treasury Annex, although it is unclear whether Google will occupy this as there is no formal letting completed at present. Upon completion, the project will deliver over 60K SF of Grade A office space on Grand Canal Street.
Salesforce
Salesforce began moving into the landmark North Docklands offices at Spencer Place in March 2023 and the 436K SF flagship office scheme currently houses about 1,400 people in Dublin, with the new building capable of ultimately housing more than 3,000 staff, making Dublin its second-largest global location behind only the San Francisco HQ. The company is understood to be looking to sub-lease an 80K SF block at the back of the main building.
X/Twitter
X/Twitter has scaled back its Dublin office space as part of a global push to cut costs. The social media company has reduced the size of its European headquarters at 1 Cumberland Street in Dublin 2, where it occupies four floors, by leasing out one of the floors to a new tenant. The entire 96K SF was made available for sublease/assignment, though just one floor, the sixth, has been leased to date.
LinkedIn said previously that it was scaling back plans to expand its Dublin offices as remote working reduced demand for space. The company had planned to open a European headquarters campus at Wilton Park, confirming in January 2020 it had signed a long-term lease with property company Iput for almost 400K SF of office space at the Dublin 2 scheme.
That included Two and Three Wilton Park, which are located immediately beside LinkedIn’s existing European headquarters offices at Wilton Place, along with Four Wilton Park. The expansion would have given the company the capacity to grow its Dublin-based workforce, then at 1,200, by more than 4,000 workers in the medium- to long-term.
However, with the pandemic causing a shift to remote work, the company has decided it no longer needs as much space. It will still move into One Wilton Park, a circa 150K SF building that was fully let to LinkedIn in 2018, but plans to expand beyond that have been curtailed. It is understood the company will still occupy Four Wilton Park when it is completed, estimated to be 2025.
The Wilton Park estate comprises the former Fitzwilton House, Wilton Park House, Gardner House, Lad Lane Apartments and their associated public spaces, plus a one-acre park on the banks of the Grand Canal.
Microsoft
Opened in 2018, the €134M One Microsoft Place is a 366K SF building designed to house in excess of 2,000 staff in Leopardstown, Co Dublin. The building itself has 1,800 seats spread across open-plan floors and smaller private areas. Adjacent to One Microsoft Place is a €27M, 108K SF engineering hub called One Microsoft Court, which houses a further 600 staff.
While based in Dublin, Microsoft also has a presence in Belfast, from which it serves its Northern Irish customers. In all, Microsoft now employs more than 3,500 people across the two countries.
