Former iconic Kildare cinema and shopping mall for sale

The former Dara Cinema in Naas town centre is up for sale along with the former Naas Shopping Mall - as a combined entity.

It has a guide price of €1.85m

The North Main Street property is described as a “retail/leisure investment opportunity” by selling agent O’Neill & Co Chartered Surveyors and Auctioneers, Naas.

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It also comprises a first floor office unit and 15 surface car park spaces. The property occupies in the region of  10,000 square feet.

Just over two years ago, Kildare County Council granted permission for a new shop entrance.

That planning application was made by Keyalane Limited, a relatively new company with an address in Dublin city and believed to be associated with a Naas-based businessman, who owns the property.

The property is a protected structure.

It is described by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as a detached five-bay two-storey cinema, built in 1939.

It was extensively renovated around 1985, with the ground floor remodelled to accommodate part use as a shopping centre. 

The NIAH previously described the cinema  as a “fine building in the international modern style – a rare example of this style in the locality and therefore of considerable importance – that has been extensively remodelled to ground floor in the late twentieth century, leading to the loss of most of the original form and character to that portion.”

It said the cinema was “typical of many of the designs for rural Irish cinemas in the early to mid twentieth century, comprising a barn-style structure fronted with a façade of sleek, dynamic, modern aspirations, and the undulating profile of the façade together with a stepped parapet wall, is a characteristic shared with many other cinema buildings throughout the country many of which are now lost.”

The premises are exempt from a building energy rating (BER). Protected structures, national monuments and places of worship are not required to have a BER certificate.