What the digital giants really did next in Dublin

After Dublin's property sector spent most of a decade riding the wave of digitalisation success, sudden job cuts at global tech giants sent shockwaves through the city's property market.

As news emerged of layoffs around the world at previously exclusively high-growth companies, mostly based in the US, the Irish capital braced itself for its share of the suffering to spill over into its own hands, with the risk of contagion spreading to the Dublin office market as a whole.

So what have the tech giants actually done and how are they leaving their mark in Dublin? Bisnow has delved behind the headlines and looked at how digital pioneers have transformed their office spaces.

Bisnow/Mark Faithfull

Meta originally leased 870,000 square feet in Ballsbridge.

“The amount of unused space available for sublease and transfer has definitely declined and the best space is being taken up, albeit slowly,” said Kate Ryan, director and head of research at Colliers.

“On a positive note for the office market, a number of large requirements have emerged or are currently being negotiated, including most notably from Workday. The recent announcement that the new campus will not be built as planned paves the way for over 300,000 square feet of leasing, potentially in one of the new speculative projects in the city centre.”

Ryan also gave examples of subletting activity in the Dublin market, including Intercom's subletting of approximately 40,000 sq ft at Cadenza, Earlsfort Terrace to KKR late last year and the subletting of 40,000 sq ft itself at Indeed's 124-127 St Stephens Green, as well as Hubspot's subletting of 44,000 sq ft at Dockland Central to Datadog.

“Interestingly, although Meta has announced that they will not be occupying the new apartment blocks in Ballsbridge, this is not currently being officially marketed,” 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 of its international headquarters, with additional locations in Meath, where its data center is located, and Cork, where Reality Labs is based.

Meta originally leased 870,000 sq ft in Ballsbridge in the fourth quarter of 2018 but later announced it would not be moving into the new blocks of approximately 380,000 sq ft 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 has now appointed agents to sublet the blocks, although it is not currently officially on the market.

The company already occupies another part of the Ballsbridge campus and, as part of the move, gave up the leases on its previous headquarters at 4 & 5 Grand Canal Square, which covered approximately 250,000 square feet.

Meta has sold the Beckett Building, which is now for sale through broker Colliers, for around €35 ​​million, but remains responsible for the annual rent of €5.75 million and all service charges until the lease's termination option on July 31, 2027. The current rent is €29.30 per square foot, excluding the building's parking spaces.

Tick ​​​​Tock

TikTok's headquarters are located in the 202,000 square foot Sorting Office in the city's southern docklands and can accommodate 2,000 people.

TikTok had also been in talks to develop Marlet Property Group's Shipping Office on Sir John Rogerson's Quay, but signed a deal for the nearby Tropical Fruit Warehouse instead. The company now occupies 85,000 square feet of office space in the six-storey riverside building. The Irish Times reported that the company has committed to a long-term lease with the project's developer and landlord, Iput Real Estate, at a rental rate of €60 per square foot. TikTok's Irish offices now cover a total area of ​​approximately 300,000 square feet.

TikTok was also set to take over the majority of X's Dublin office after agreeing to sublet the Fenian Street premises for up to five years in exchange for taking over four of the five floors in Cumberland House. However, that deal fell through.

Bisnow/Mark Faithfull

Google's Dublin headquarters consists of a campus with four buildings.

Google/Alphabet

Barrow Street is the main office campus of the Alphabet/Google company, which employs 3,000 people and opened in 2013 with a total of 46,000 square metres. The Google EU headquarters is a quartet of buildings comprising a 14-storey Google Docks building, as well as Gasworks House, Gordon House and One Grand Canal, all located in the Docklands district. The campus includes five restaurants, 42 micro kitchens, 400 informal and formal meeting rooms, communications centres, a conference, learning and development centre, technology centres, games rooms, fitness centres and a swimming pool.

Boland Mills on Boland's Quay opened in September 2023 after Google bought the site for €300 million in 2018 and is the engineering hub of its 1,000-strong Dublin office.

Google owns a number of other buildings in the city, including South Bank House, The Warehouse, Two Grand Canal Plaza, The Foundry and Montevetro. It also has a presence in The Chase and Blackthorn Building in the Sandyford Business District and Eastpoint Business Park. The company employs over 5,000 people across Ireland.

The expansion of the Treasury Building on Grand Canal Street, which Google bought in 2020, is also progressing. The new building will consist of two independent buildings that can be connected on multiple levels. Once completed, it will be renamed Bolands Bakery, according to a recent update from Michael Conaghan, Google's regional director of workplace design and delivery.

In addition, Ronan Group is building the adjacent Treasury Annex, although it is unclear whether Google will occupy it as no formal leasing has been completed at this time. Once completed, the project will provide over 60,000 square feet of Grade A office space on Grand Canal Street.

Foreclosure

Salesforce began moving into its landmark North Docklands offices on Spencer Place in March 2023. The 436,000 sq ft flagship office building currently houses around 1,400 people in Dublin. The new building will ultimately accommodate more than 3,000 employees, making Dublin the company's second largest global location after its San Francisco headquarters. The company is reportedly looking to sublet an 80,000 sq ft block at the rear of the main building.

Bisnow/Mark Faithfull

X/Twitter has downsized its office space in Dublin.

X/Twitter

X/Twitter has downsized its Dublin office space as part of a global initiative 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 one of the floors to a new tenant. The entire 96,000 square feet has been made available for sublease/assignment, although only one floor, the sixth, has been leased so far.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn had previously said 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 in Wilton Park and confirmed in January 2020 that it had signed a long-term lease with property company Iput for almost 400,000 square feet of office space in the Dublin 2 project.

These included Two and Three Wilton Park, located right next to LinkedIn's existing European headquarters in Wilton Place, and Four Wilton Park. The expansion would have given the company the opportunity to grow its Dublin workforce, which then stood at 1,200, by more than 4,000 employees in the medium to long term.

But as the pandemic prompted 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 roughly 13,000-square-foot building that was fully leased to LinkedIn in 2018, but plans for further expansion have been scaled back. It expects the company will still occupy Four Wilton Park upon completion, which is expected to be in 2025.

The Wilton Park estate includes the former Fitzwilton House, Wilton Park House, Gardner House, Lad Lane Apartments and their associated public areas, as well as a 4,000 square metre park on the banks of the Grand Canal.

Microsoft

Opened in 2018, the €134 million One Microsoft Place is a 33,000 square metre building designed to house over 2,000 employees in Leopardstown, Co Dublin. The building itself has 1,800 seats spread across open floors and smaller private areas. Next to One Microsoft Place is a €27 million, 10,000 square metre engineering centre called One Microsoft Court, which houses a further 600 employees.

Microsoft is based in Dublin and also has a presence in Belfast, from where it serves its Northern Irish customers. In total, Microsoft now employs more than 3,500 people in both countries.