No bull: There's a field of buyers for €650k Cork Bull McCabe’s bar and grill

There’s been a hostelry on the roadside site on the Kinsale Road, since the 19th century, with Cork Airport opening on top of the hill in 1961, following on footsteps of an airfield at Farmers Cross since the later 1940s.

Today, Cork Airport deals with over 2.2m passengers a year, many of whom pass by Bull Cabe’s on departure or arrival, while its more immediate hinterland is a mix of retail, commercial and residential occupiers.

The arrival for sale with a seemingly modest price guide of €650,000 is a landmark of sorts, and the sale could see the property on a 0.4ac site pivot to new or repositioned uses, from hospitality to more varied occupiers.

Named after the character Bull McCabe in John B Keane’s legendary 1960s play The Field, the bar and grill opened in 1998, after the sale of the former O’Halloran family’s long-established Friendship Bar.

Not just a convivial spot in the early days of international flight, Cork’s Friendship Bar was named after the Fokker Friendship turboprop airliner, developed post-war and where Aer Lingus was the first airline to use a F27-100 Friendship on commercial passenger routes from 1958.

The Bull McCabe hospitality property’s more recent past saw the operating company Activebundles Ltd go into liquidation in September 2023. The company, set up in 2013, was headed by Derek Dunne who had facilitated the liquidation and, now, the property sell-off at a junction at Ballycurreen on the busy N27.

It’s understood the business model of bar/carvery/grill/food offer didn’t recover sufficiently post-covid, and its doors closed several months ago. Current rates for 2023 were €21,000.

Selling agents are Malcolm Tyrrell and Robert Coughlan of Cohalan Downing, offering it by private treaty and they state: “It’s a great opportunity to acquire a substantial and long-established public house/restaurant premises in a very high-profile location with 90m frontage on to the Kinsale Road linking Cork City to the airport and Kinsale.” 

Mr Coughlan notes it is a 3,800 sq ft, two-storey c 130-seat venue on 0.4ac, with parking for around 30 cars, close to a number of large commercial parks and employment hubs “with a significant surrounding residential catchment” and plans for large-scale housing and a hotel on the city side of the junction. Significant occupiers nearby include Hanley’s garden centre (previously the Touchdown Bar), Lehane Motors, Dwyers, Cork Lighting & Interiors, and Musgraves.

• DETAILS: Cohalan Downing, 021 4277717.