Kelly's empire
Published: 10 November, 2006
Paddy Kelly, the 62-year-old snow-haired Dublin-based developer, who currently has at least 50 separate projects on the go in Ireland and internationally, has an enviable reputation. It's said that while everyone in property in Ireland has enemies, no one can or will say a bad word against him.
The amiable facade of this thoroughly decent gentleman belies an extraordinarily shrewd eye for a deal. One of the biggest schemes with which he is currently deeply involved is the E2bn Pizzaro scheme in Bray, Co Wicklow. This will have a very strong retail element but Kelly says that it's not about a shopping centre in the traditional sense. "It's all about community and streets."
Kelly's also very involved with Arnotts and its E700m development plans for the Northern Quarter in Dublin city centre. He took a 40 per cent share of the former Independent News & Media building in Middle Abbey Street and Arnotts took the balance. This vast site is going to be a key element in the Arnotts development plan.
Kelly says that the reason he can keep so many balls in the air at any one time is because of his collaborative approach to development. He says he is very keen on everyone working together in partnership, giving sufficient incentives to encourage people and ensure their loyalty.
The family background is in Co Laois, in the south Irish Midlands. His great grandfather, also Patrick Kelly, was a tenant farmer and a member of the Land League in the late 19th century. Caught pasting up a Land League poster, urging people to boycott local landlords, he was sentenced to five years penal servitude. The Kelly family was evicted from their farm.
Kelly's grandfather, Michael, became the Laois county engineer after a long struggle. He had to attend numerous job interviews before being appointed, because he was the son of a convicted felon. Says Kelly: "I often think of his persistence when I'm dealing with the banks."
His own father, Christopher, eventually moved to Dublin and started a construction business. He also moved into property development there. When Paddy was just 16, his father was diagnosed with MS, so he dropped out of school to help his seven brothers run the family firm.
The first property deal in his own right was when he bought a site of nearly 50 ha at Celbridge, near Dublin, for £120,000 in 1967. Two years later, in 1969, he met his future wife, Maureen Donohoe, then a 20-year-old blonde. The amiable Paddy was playing a guitar in a pub band, but he moved quickly. Maureen may have been a little shy, but they were married within six weeks. Their first home was a caravan on a site that Paddy planned to build on.
The Kellys have four children. The eldest, Emma, runs her own public relations company in Dublin, while the three sons are all involved in Paddy's property holding company, Redquartz.
Paddy built up his portfolio of property interests year by year after that first deal in 1967. Then disaster struck. He and Maureen had become Names in Lloyds; then the bank called in the Names to underwrite Lloyds' huge losses. He had to sell his fine house on Shrewsbury Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin, the most exclusive residential street in the capital.
He sold the house for £700,000, but kept the side garden and built a new house there, which is now estimated to be worth well over E10m. Kelly quickly bounced back from that misfortune. He went into the hotels business in a big way, through his involvement in the Prem Group, which is a major operator of hotels in Ireland, business centres in Dublin and Belfast and aparthotels in Britain. He's now one of the biggest hoteliers in Ireland.
He has been involved in all kinds of developments in Dublin, including the E400m mixed-use development at Smithfield Market, which has 10 per cent retail content. He's a 20 per cent partner in the planned Pizzaro scheme in Bray. If it goes through planning and into construction, it will be one of the biggest new retail developments lined up for Ireland.
Another of his partners, John McCabe, says that Kelly is a very dynamic lateral thinker, one of the best at researching and creating a vision for a development. This attitude could result in a very exciting development in Bray.
Property investments Kelly also has some property interests in London and massive developments under way in Florida. Yet another retail-based scheme in Ireland in which he's involved is in Kilkenny, where Kelly and his family paid E17m last year for a 13 ha site where it's planned to build a retail warehouse scheme together with residential development. At the moment, plans are being prepared.
In terms of returns for investors in retailing in Ireland, he believes that the high street will offer better returns in the longer term, rather than shopping centres.
In short, all the deals that he is currently involved in with partners are estimated by himself to be worth about E5bn. His own personal fortune is estimated at more than E200m, but his philosophy is simple. "The only thing you can do in this life, if you have the resources, is to build a better life for others. Ultimately, I believe that happiness comes from the journey within. It comes when you share, so I have a happy life."
He also believes that what goes around comes around. An aggressive attitude gets results, but leaves bad thoughts, so he's a great believer in not insisting, but persisting. Aggression in business isn't his scene and he prefers to get everyone on board and happy.
Kelly is good, too, at leveraging government incentives and excellent at marketing new developments. But neither does he work too hard, aiming to leave the office between 5.30pm and 6pm and not working in the evenings. In his free time, he likes golf and travel. "People don't achieve an enormous amount by working too hard, they just get tired."
He's also a very charitable person, giving E999,999.99 towards building houses in the South African townships under an Irish aid scheme. When the National College of Ireland was doing a fundraiser a few years ago, he asked its president, Joyce O'Connor, to dance. When she said there was no music, Kelly said there didn't have to be and promptly donated E250,000.
His generosity, his collaborative style of working and his love of good humour and a joke are just a few of the many reasons why no one has even the slightest bad word to say about him.
Another Irish property developer, John Kelly, who partnered him in the Smithfield development, says: "He's not a greedy person, he doesn't seek to get the last euro out of a deal and makes sure that everyone on his team is happy."
How this reticent but extremely amiable property developer manages to keep such an extraordinary number of schemes on the go all at the one time never ceases to amaze. But Kelly makes it all seem so effortlessly easy and such good fun, too.
