Robin Power: One of Ireland’s earliest property developers who cut deals with the likes of Donald Trump
Robin Power was described as 'a pioneer and a visionary'.
One of Ireland’s earliest and most influential property developers Robin Power, who cut deals with the likes of Donald Trump and created some of the country’s most iconic buildings, has died following a protracted illness.
Having developed an entrepreneurial streak while in UCC, promoting concerts and showbands for the likes of the Dixies and Dinosaurs at the Arcadia, Mr Power began his professional career as a dentist, in a practice on MacCurtain St in Cork City.
He was born in 1943, and among lesser-known accomplishments was winning the Liffey Swim in 1958 for Cork club Sunday’s Well, perhaps marking him out as someone who could swim both with and against the tides.
His career path would change dramatically from dentistry and ultimately lead to an international property empire with a worth put at hundreds of millions in the heyday of the Power Corporation, after his energetic business streak saw him purchase a restaurant on a side street in Cork City in 1973, splitting it into shops to rent.
Getting a taste for retail development primarily, he later went on to redevelop the former Savoy cinema on Cork’s Patrick’s Street as a high-end shopping mall with restaurants and a night venue, as well as redeveloping the former Queens Old Castle and the Victoria Hotel, opening it up to the likes of Burgerland, Dayvilles, and Pizzaland at ground level.
As the business began to expand internationally, including across several partnerships, Mr Power’s corporate offices came to occupy a landmark castellated building on the top of Cork’s St Patrick’s Hill, Audley House, now occupied by Bruce College.
And, in similar taste, he upgraded the historic 17th century Ballea Castle near Carrigaline as his family residence, using salvaged timbers in parts from Queens Old Castle.
In Dublin, Mr Power repeated the retail and restaurant mix pattern on a larger scale at the Powerscourt Centre off Grafton St and built the Georgian replica offices of the Investment Bank of Ireland at Leeson Street Bridge in Dublin.
He remained close to friends from his early music promotion days, such as drummer Joe McCarthy of the Dixies and Stage 2, and offered him a cafe/restaurant in the Queens Old Castle, while he also helped establish the legendary Mary Rose’s cafes in the Savoy and Queens Old Castle, with design by architect Jim Twomey.
Later relocating to South Dublin and heading to ‘tycoon’ status, and fond of Rolls Royce cars, his property empire expanded from Ireland to London and an unsuccessful attempt to redevelop the Trocadero site in London’s Piccadilly Circus, and in the US with partners like Vincent O’Farrell and Finbarr Hill, primarily on the west coast but also in Florida and New York.
At an early to mid-1990s peak, the Power Corporation was worth an estimated £230m with his own shareholding at £33m.
His international partners in deals included British boxer turned property developer George Walker, and the former US president and property developer, Donald Trump.
His projects with Trump included a plan to redevelop the Ambassador Hotel, the place where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.
After a slump in property values in the UK and the US, and heavily borrowed, the Power Corporation struggled and share values collapsed in the mid-1990s.
Once described as “the most audacious property developer of the 1980s,” after the floatation of the Power Corporation in 1985 and its ten-year trail-blazing reign on both sides of the Atlantic, Mr Power and his second wife, Michelle Kavanagh, subsequently began to assemble a strong portfolio of residential properties along the Dublin coastline and around Dalkey.
The couple lived at Sorrento Terrace, renting their investments to an elite corporate market and to embassies and ambassadors. A number were sold off in the past decade, at multi-million euro sums, after one of his businesses, Kembara Properties, went into liquidation in 2015. Some of the next generation of the late Mr Power’s family also went into the high-end corporate-letting market in Cork for a period.
Mr Power — whose funeral took place on Tuesday — is survived by his children and grandchildren, from two marriages, to Clare and, later, to Michelle Kavanagh.
Well-connected, Mr Power had a wide cross section of contacts, from Mr Trump in the US to Dixies drummer Joe McCarthy in his native Cork.
Paying tribute, this week, he said Mr Power "was far-reaching". "He was good for Cork, and he was good to me.”
Mr McCarthy said after he left The Dixies — who set attendance records at ‘The Arc’ of 4,300 — ex-promoter Mr Power advised him on starting the band Stage 2 with Brendan O’Brien and they became lifelong friends, meeting in Cork, Dublin, the US and Monte Carlo.
“When the music stopped, I asked him for job,” recalled Mr McCarthy, “ and I became his chauffeur, rent collector, child minder and dogsbody.”
Describing the late Mr Power as a shy man who never smoked or drank, he said “he loved the craic, he’d get me making music, or telling jokes." He also facilitated for Mr McCarthy to open his own restaurant in the Queens Old Castle in that development’s heyday.
“I’d go to collect him up in Ballea Castle in my wife’s Fiat 850 and drive him out in the Rolls Royce, it was like James Bond,” he quipped.
They last met a year ago, when Mr Power rang to invite him and a gathering of old Cork friends for a meal in Hayfield Manor.
“it was like The Last Supper,” Mr McCarthy joked. “He was a very generous man, I miss him and I love him.”
Cork developer Michael O'Flynn paid tribute to Mr Power, saying he was far ahead of his time.
"Robin was a pioneer, a visionary. He was an international developer when very few people were. He had retail shopping centre developments in Dublin, London, and the US.
"The development business is cyclical. He had some difficult times with Power Corporation but he rallied again. When times were tough, he found a way to make it work. You would have to admire his career. He had that ability to think above and outside the areas most people concentrate on.”
