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Those familiar with a crisis will tell you that it is a series of unfortunate events rather than a single “trigger” that can make it a disaster.
Developer Johnny Ronan knows that the sensation after a video of him joking coughing and sputtering around a poster for Corona beer went viral last week, followed almost immediately by the announcement that the beloved Bewley’s Oriental Cafe in Grafton. Street, Dublin, will close, in part because its owners believe the rent they are paying is unsustainable.
“Jaysus, if every time we went for a pint and appeared on social media, we would all live very boring lives,” he said yesterday, adding: “I apologized and said it seriously, but we really had no idea what was coming for the tracks at the time. Now I know it’s no laughing matter. “
As for Bewley, he says: “It is a magnificent building and I love beautiful buildings. That is one of the reasons I bought it.
“I hope someone fantastic will rent it out and replace what’s in there with an amazing and better world-class version of Bewley, but at the moment I don’t know.”
The controversial real estate developer, who is in the process of building a European headquarters for Salesforce at Liffey’s banks, Facebook in Ballsbridge, and has approval for a 23-story structure on Tara Street, says he doesn’t want to trivialize what happened to him. last week, but his biggest concern is what the blockade is doing to the Irish economy.
“I think the doctors and front-line workers have risked their lives, they are doing an incredible job, but the government has to speed up the recovery of people to work,” he says.
“No one is going to hit 100pc, but I really think we need to start opening things up.”
“My own mother is 92 years old and I love her very much, even she said to me when I spoke to her this morning, ‘You can’t destroy the economy, you can only do so much and then you have to stop it.’
“It is a delicate balancing act, but we have to try to open up for business and we have to do it faster than planned.”
Ronan, once a co-owner of Treasury Holdings, spent the years of the Celtic Tiger ranging from the ridiculous to the formidable.
Between the construction of the Liffey Convention Center and other international developments, there were strange and highly publicized encounters with celebrities Glenda Gilson and Rosanna Davison that became part of the mythology of the Celtic Tiger era.
But since escaping from the clutches of the bad state bank, Nama, in 2015, when he partnered with US investment and real estate group Colony Capital, he has kept a relatively low profile, aside from his constant battles with Dublin City Council to lift height restrictions. certain parts of the city.
But Johnny Ronan’s rise, fall, and rise has left a trail of people eager to knock him down a peg or two, and last week they were given the shot at a plate.
A mobile phone clip filmed in South Africa on February 29, in which he mocks the coronavirus (declared a pandemic on March 11) went viral just as Bewley’s Oriental Cafe in Dublin announced that it would be closed for good, in part due to € 1.4 Rent must be paid to Ronan every year.
In retrospect, Ronan’s coronavirus video was youthful and sadly ‘laddish’ for an adult male, but Ronan and another Confederate, Formula One team owner Eddie Jordan are people who can apologize and move on quickly.
Philip Cassidy, the former Irish cycling champion who distributed it to his cycling friends “for private use”, has been unable to sleep through the night since he was released, feeling that he had disappointed the two men and seemed distressed when he appeared on the radio with Joe Duffy last week.
The group, which regularly participates in grueling charity cycles, was in South Africa to raise funds for a sick friend, who has since died.
“I know that people were upset and some even angry, and I understand that, but if we all knew that our private moments, especially after a few drinks, were going to be online, we would live very different and peaceful lives,” said Ronan. He says.
“Jaysus, a lot of people wouldn’t like me, or anyone else, to see what’s on their phones.”
Eager to move on to other topics, Ronan adds: “We did the 109 km Argus race in three hours, 16 minutes, not bad after all the drinking.”
The matter of closing Bewley’s flagship cafe takes it much more seriously.
“A hundred people are going to lose their jobs, that is a tragedy for them,” he says. “I understand that, but I don’t run Bewley’s, it’s the Campbell family business. It’s one of the biggest buildings on Grafton Street. People don’t realize that, and that’s one of the reasons why rent is so tall”.
“We made plans, very detailed plans, to turn it into a hotel, with a much smaller café that could have operated at a reduced rent.”
Founded in 1927 and run by several members of the Quaker Bewley family for generations, the business, including the property of the Grafton Street building, which once housed the Whyte Academy where the Duke of Wellington went to school, passed into the hands of Patrick Campbell and Campbell Catering in 1986. The following year, the Grafton Street building was sold to Royal Insurance in a 35-year ‘sale and lease agreement’ with the provision of rent increases only upward.
“The key here is that when Campbell Catering took over, they sold the building and put the lease in place and made a huge profit. Now they are groaning for the rent on the contract they wrote themselves,” says Ronan.
When contacted by the Sunday Independent last week, a statement was issued on behalf of Bewley’s Cafe Grafton Street Limited saying: “The company has no further information to add to its recently issued statement (May 6, 2020) and is now fully focused on engaging with their affected employees in a responsive and considerate manner in a consultation process as part of the proposed permanent closure of Bewley’s Cafe Grafton Street. “
Ronan bought the building from the insurance company about 20 years ago. He also owns the TSB building on the corner of Grafton Street and the former American Express building across from the Trinity College House in Provost through his company RGRE Grafton.
During a period when an arbitrator had released the rent at € 728,000 per year, Ronan says that the Spanish retailer Zara offered him 2 million euros a year for the building. He claims he offered to buy back the Bewley’s lease for € 6 million, but they turned it down. The rent was finally set at € 1,464,000 per year after a Supreme Court case while his empire was in Nama, who were part of the action.
“It’s great for people to say ‘let the landlord take less or let the landlord take the hit’, but I have two mortgages on that property. In April we had to pay quarterly interest on what we borrowed. Even if we wanted to Give them a break, the bank would have to consent and they never would. The rent goes from Bewley’s to our bank, we don’t even see it. Bewley’s is a very profitable company, but they are trying to blame this on me.
“To be fair to Patrick Campbell, he invested 12 million euros in restoring the restaurant. It is very sad, but they have decided to close it, not me.”
In a note to staff released last Thursday, Bewley managing director Col Campbell, son of owner Patrick Campbell, said that due to a “real probability that coffee will generate substantial and unsustainable losses in the future” measures were needed urgent to preserve Bewley’s general business. This includes other coffees and an importing subsidiary of tea and coffee that generated a turnover of 147 million euros last year. He said Ronan’s company request for a rent reduction “was not received.”
In response, Rory Williams, CEO of the Ronan Group, said: “Bewley’s has made it clear on numerous occasions that we are not in a position to subsidize its business when its shareholders are perfectly capable of doing so. Bewley’s is a successful profitable company and has generated profits. significant to its shareholders over a period of many years. “
When the cafe closed due to Covid-19 in March, Bewley applied for a vacation rental for an initial period of six months. The Ronan Group says it did not take advantage of the offer to arrange a meeting between Johnny Ronan and Patrick Campbell, now an artist, to resolve the issues.
“Right now I don’t know what’s going to happen to Bewley’s,” says Ronan. “They haven’t called us to tell us what they plan to do. We have read it in the newspapers.”
Ronan says the current blockade is “hurting everyone” and that many companies are going to suffer, but hopes that decisive government action can help save as much of the economy as possible. He also has doubts about whether the widespread work-from-home regime will continue when closure restrictions are lifted.
“I don’t know many people, unless they have extraordinary relationships, who want to continue working from home. Most of them want to get back to the office as fast as they can,” he laughs.
However, he adds that the tendency for some companies to squeeze employees in small spaces like rows of sardines is a thing of the past.
“Many elite companies that we deal with are giving more space per employee. They were doing it anyway, they want to attract talented people and give them space to work and additional facilities to keep them happy.”
It may have been a stressful week for some of those around him, but for Johnny Ronan it is all part of life’s rich contest.
How did your family take the South African getaway? I ask him, “Jaysus, don’t even go there,” he replies.
Later, he sends me a couple of pictures of him and his friends about the various charity cycles that take up his free time when he’s not dreaming up grandiose plans for the city skyline.
You are already moving towards a new adventure.
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