Professional networking giant LinkedIn is to more than double its office space in Dublin as revenue booms at the California-based business.
It is eyeing a vacant site at Lad Lane, Dublin 2, adjacent to its current headquarters in Wilton Plaza, for a design-and-build premises of between 85,000 and 100,000 sq ft.
The one-acre site is currently owned by office and residential developer Ellier Investments, which bought the land from the Office of Public Works in 2004 for around €22.5m (£15.2m).
LinkedIn employs 450 people at its 55,000 sq ft Wilton Plaza office, which it opened in 2010, but the company is growing exponentially, with Q2 revenue up by almost 50% to $534m (£320m) and full-year turnover expected to top $2bn.
Shared accommodation website AirBnB is also seeking to more than double its office space in Dublin. The $10bn company is on the lookout for more the 60,000 sq ft of office space for its European headquarters, and is honing its search on the South Docks area.
Airbnb, which is tipped to float later this year, currently occupies 25,000 sq ft at the Watermarque building in Dublin 4.
Tech firms are driving the return of the Irish market, with 32% of the 1m sq ft Dublin office take-up in the first half of the year coming from the sector.
The LinkedIn deal would ?also represent a return to ?development in the market, as the first design-and-build ?project in this cycle.
One Dublin-based property economist said: “We have now reached a tipping point at which design-and-build is a viable option, and it would make sense for tech firms to go down this route, given demand.”
