Every tenant has a family. It’s not all about profit
It’s not the kind of outlook normally expected from a Dublin city centre landlord, but the Layden family is determined that the George’s Arcade traders, for whom it has suspended rents, will survive – and thrive again
THOSE few days before Christmas were particularly f raught and c onfusing. As numbers continued to rise and the Government met daily to discuss new restrictions, retail businesses braced themselves to shut their doors once again.
It was all so grim. And then, in the midst of all the headlines and rows about who should close and when, came a tweet from the landlord of one of Dublin’s best loved shopping institutions.
‘Dear ALL the Georges Street Arcade. I want you NOT to WORRY,’ it read. ‘We will support you. Your safety is more important to me than my income. We will give more rent breaks in January. So trade safely and happily and do not worry. You are all fantastic. Thank you. Gwen Layden.’
You can only imagine the relief it must have brought to the 42 businesses that trade out of the Victorian red-brick indoor market. Although this is by no means the first time the Layden family has put the interests of its tenants above optimum profits.
When Covid-19 first hit early last year, the family froze rents at the arcade for the three months of the first lockdown, and for the month
‘Yes we’re profit driven but it’s not the bottom line’
afterwards, to allow traders to get back on their feet. Full rents weren’t restored until late into the autumn.
When we went into lockdown in November, rents were stopped again. It was a truly altruistic gesture and one the company has insisted on doing again now that the country is at a fully-implemented level 5.
‘It’s harder the longer it goes on,’ admits Gwen Layden. ‘There’s no doubt about that. But that doesn’t mean you stamp your feet and say, “I want it [rent] now because it’s gone on too long.” You have to accept the situation for the tenant is no different. It’s based on how comfortable it will be for them to pay, always.’
As the full impact of the increasing infection rates take a grip of the country, it’s been one of the bright spots on an otherwise dark and troubling landscape; a reminder of how acts of kindness can impact the lives of those who are really struggling.
Layden says her father, Joe, has always been a considerate sort of man, who believes that people are the cornerstone of any kind of business.
‘Our company is very peopleorientated,’ she explains. ‘ It’s profit-driven of course, but it’s not the bottom line.’
Joe Layden set up his property investment business in 1978 and at the age of 76 is still the managing director. Three of his children — Gwen, Siobhan and Jack — work for the company as executive directors, while his other daughter Anita and wife Catherine are nonexecutive directors.
‘Dad comes from a mining company family in Leitrim but he didn’t go into the business,’ says Gwen. ‘Instead he went to America when he was 23 years old and did an MBA [Masters in business administration] in Washington.’
On his return to Ireland Joe got into banking. ‘He was the underwriting manager of Bank of Ireland Finance by the time he l eft,’ says Gwen. ‘He then started the Layden Group.’
It’s been a fairly successful venture for the Leitrim man.
The group spent time buying and selling properties in Germany and using the proceeds to purchase multiple properties around Ireland, including a number of banks and the O2 store on Grafton Street.
In 2019, the family was placed 276th on the Sunday Times rich list, with an estimated fortune of €63 million. Gwen joined her father in the family business a couple of decades ago.
‘I did a Masters in economics in UCD, worked here and there and then went into the company to help dad,’ she says. ‘I work so well with him, we’ve never had a cross word and had so many laughs. Any project he turned his hand to always involved helping people and businesses.
‘When I was a little girl in school, I worked for him answering the phones in the office. There was a homeless guy called Robert, and he got paid every Friday, same as the builders. That’s always been there, the way that people are helped along the way.
‘He’s also involved in charities in west Africa, there is always a charitable element in what he does.’
In 2000, Joe set up the Epicurean Food Hall on Liffey Street, just yards from the Ha’penny Bridge. A pretty exotic venture for the site that once traded as the Abbey Street Mall, it hosted a couple of dozen food and beverage stores and cafes.
Cuisines on offer came from all over the world, including Italy, France, Mexico, Turkey, Greece, Japan and Ireland.
‘Dad loves food and we’ve always had an interest in bringing people from all over the world into business in Ireland,’ says Gwen. ‘So we invited people from all over the world to bring their food to the hall. We’d also some really good Irish people, like the fishmonger Peter Caviston and Derry Clarke of l’Ecrivain.
‘It was really multicultural, which was fabulous as not that many foreign nationals were opening up their own businesses at the time.’
After a few successful years, however, the Epicurean Hall was hit by the recession and was mostly closed a couple of years ago.
‘Istanbul, the Turkish restaurant, is the only one left now,’ says Gwen. ‘The rest is rented to a Dealz shop.’
The other great venture they took over was the George’s Street Arcade. First opened in 1881, it was originally called the South City Markets.
‘We bought it 30 years ago, along with a few other different buildings, which we’ve since sold off,’ says Gwen. ‘People said dad was crazy buying it, it was quite run down and wasn’t fully let but he liked the challenge.
‘It was a risk to buy. Interest rates were running at about 17% at that time and it cost about £1million. They went up even higher afterwards, in fact they skyrocketed. It was the early 1990s, which were really grim times, and it was a gam
‘Dad has always helped people along the way’
ble. You had to see the potential, and dad always does, he always sees an upside. I think business people have to be optimistic, they definitely see things differently.
‘We were young when he bought it, I remember walking through there with him and I didn’t think much of it at all. There were more people begging there than there were paying rent. George’s Street at that time was nothing like it is today.’
The property came with some longterm tenants and employees.
‘One thing we made sure of was that anyone on board never was told to leave. We value loyalty, we really do,’ says Gwen. ‘The security guard Joe Hennessy was there, his father had done it before him. Joe’s still with us, he lives across the road.
‘There was Paddy McGrail, the piercer, he’s there 42 years, his son and grandchild are now working with him. Stephen Stokes of Stokes Books is there 37 years, while Simon McWilliams of Simon’s Place café is there decades.
‘Then there’s Marie Morrissey of the Retro clothes shop, Debbie Harry used to go to her, Imelda May gets her clothes there now. And there’s been fortune telling there for years, although the person doing it is different now. There was Alex Keely too.’
Things improved hugely after the 1990s, but then came the recession of 2007.
‘That was when I learned about going easy on people,’ says Gwen. ‘We were chatting over that Christmas and Dad told us there was a recession coming, the tenants wouldn’t have seen it. So he suggested we reduce all their rents by a third.
‘From that January we just did it, before anyone else.
‘Dad would never put pressure on anyone. The only person he puts pressure is himself, he works every day. The rents never went up again, and it meant everyone survived.’
While profits from the Arcade were undoubtedly hit, Joe was doing well enough elsewhere to make up for the losses. ‘He’d be doing other projects and he’d take it from his own money,’ says Gwen. ‘The Arcade is profitable, but we never expected to make a brilliant income from it, nothing like you’d get nearer Grafton Street, I’d say our rents are a sixth of Grafton Street rents.
‘But sustaining people’s livelihoods is really important. We’re a family, we use our money to provide for our families, so we get that. Every single tenant has a family, just like we do. It’s not all about profit.’
The other responsibility the Layden family believes it has is the historical significance of the Arcade.
’I feel it’s a part of old Dublin,’ says Gwen. ‘It is exactly how it was built in 1891, that’s important, to keep the architectural integrity. It can be expensive, but you do it bit by bit.’
Another reason to keep rents reasonable at the Arcade, Layden says, is to encourage people new to Ireland to open their own retail outlets.
‘It’s a place where people can open businesses easily,’ she explains. ‘We have a bunch of people who are first generation in Ireland, from Venezuela, Italy, Korea, China, Poland, Palestine, they have all opened businesses in the Arcade.
‘There was a man from Korea, who recently went home to his family because of the pandemic. Before he left, he told me he could never have dreamt he would have owned a business in Ireland. But he walked into the Arcade and he got a unit. That is so important.’
So far this generosity of spirit has worked very well for Gwen.
‘I’m lucky, I really do like people and th that makes the job easy,’ sh she says. ‘We’re trusting people pe and I’ve found if you yo give someone your trust, tru they’ll generally behave be honourably.
‘I’m not trying to sound Pollyannish, but it’s nice to be able to help people with their businesses.’
When Covid hit, the Layden family unani-mously agreed to give as many breaks as possible to the tenants. No one could have predicted we’d be going into our third lockdown within a year, but the family is commit-ted to continuing its support.
‘What can you do? You can’t can’ fight a pandemic and they [the tenants] are not making mak the money,’ says Gwen. ‘I know there’s the PUP payment, but they have to feed their families and it’s not fair for us to take it. So unless we’re hungry...
‘Hopefully our banks will understand as well. You do have to maintain the building all a the time and the insurers are not giving breaks to anybody. Although the rates office has been brilliant, they’re not charging rates at the minute which is wonderful and they deserve great credit.’
During the November lockdown, lockdo the Arcade was kept open despite the shops being closed.
‘We put up the Christmas lights,’ says Gwen. ‘Just to give people a nice place to walk through. But this time, everyone’s at home, there’s no point in risking people’s health.’
She does miss the buzz of the indoor market. ‘All of the tenants are such lovely people and we have a great bonhomie,’ she says. ‘Every Christmas we have drinks at a local hotel, and people do their party pieces.’
They’ve often come together to celebrate at other times.
‘When someone gets nationalised, that’s a great celebration, or someone might have a baby, all sorts of things,’ says Gwen. ‘When John Reynolds [the promoter who died at the age of 52 in 2018] passed away, we marked that, which was very sad, we were very fond of him.
‘He had a barbers shop in the Arcade and the kitchen of the Market Bar belongs to us.
‘He’d come to me with all sorts of ideas and I’d always say, “yeah, go for it”. He was very artistic.’
While she misses the Arcade, she is happy everything is shut down for the moment.
‘I think our frame of mind has changed, it really is a health issue now,’ she says.
‘We could have opened the food shops but it’s the quietest time of year anyway, and no doubt someone would have picked the virus up. So at the moment we’re just happy not to be risking anyone getting sick.
‘I’m not worried about the future, I know the businesses will all be there when we open again.
‘What’s really sad is when I look out at the shutters closed across the way, or around town. Because every shutter is some family devastated. A shutter down is a whole collection of problems.
‘But thankfully I think it would be hard to find a George’s Street Arcade trader who’s worried too much during the pandemic. And that brings our family great comfort.’
‘Sustaining livelihoods is really important’