By Michael Elkins
The Irish Times reported Wednesday that the online payment platform, PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL) has instructed agent CBRE to find a buyer for its main office campus in Blanchardstown, Dublin 15. The announcement comes just one week after the company announced its intention to seek 62 redundancies from its Irish business and the reorganization of its operations due to increased levels of remote working.
The Campus at Ballycoolin Business Park is being offered at a guide price of €26 million (€1 = $1.0547). The property extends across a total area of 20.7 acres, and consists of four separate buildings extending to 170,854sq ft.
Ballycoolin Business Park is one of Ireland’s most established business parks. The scheme is home to a number of major occupiers including eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), Kepple Data Centres, K2 Data Centers and Veritas.
Commenting on the sale of the Campus at Ballycoolin, Garrett McClean, executive director at CBRE, said: “The Campus represents a superb opportunity to acquire a substantial portfolio of four buildings. Buildings 2, 4 and 5 were fully refurbished to a very high turn-key standard at a cost of approximately €15 million between 2019 and 2021. Given the quality and strategic location of this portfolio, the competitive guide, along which the obvious development potential, we’re expecting strong demand from investors, developers and occupiers from across multiple sectors.”
Those staff in Dundalk who remain with the U.S. payments company will work remotely, while the firm’s Dublin-based employees will move from Ballycoolin to a smaller office in the city center that “better meets the needs of its workforce”.
“Ways of working at PayPal, as at many other companies, have completely transformed over the last three years,” Maeve Dorman, senior vice president at PayPal, said last week.
“Employees, including myself, have really embraced the flexibility of our new working models and the increased opportunity to work from home. As a result, employee footfall at our offices at Dublin and Dundalk has remained consistently low. Nonetheless, we have maintained our strong community connections and supports in these regions, and will continue to do so.”
The Irish job cuts and office closures come after PayPal said at the end of January that it planned to shed 2,000 jobs, or 7 percent of its global workforce.
Shares of PYPL are up 1.07% in afternoon trading on Wednesday.