Athlone Town Center

Athlone Towncentre opened on November 1, 2007, on Mardyke Street in the heart of Athlone, County Westmeath, becoming the largest shopping centre in Ireland’s Midlands region. US investment group Davidson Kempner Capital Management acquired the property in 2015 as part of a €118 million purchase of six provincial Irish shopping centres, a portfolio that had carried a pre-2007-crash valuation of €400-450 million.

At roughly 13,000 sqm across two floors, the property carries around 60 stores anchored by Marks & Spencer, with Next, Zara, H&M, Sports Direct, River Island and JD Sports among the tenant roster. Boots signed a 10-year lease on a 3,500 sqft ground-floor unit, securing the space in early 2026, joining Australian jewelry brand Lovisa, which had recently opened a 1,000 sqft store on the same floor; Golden Discs relocated and upsized to a 2,100 sqft first-floor unit previously occupied by Quiz.

The property sits within easy reach of the M6 Dublin-Galway motorway and provides 1,200 multi-storey parking spaces. A separate, unrelated property, Golden Island Shopping Centre, also operates in Athlone; opened in 1997 with a different ownership history (Tesco, then Credit Suisse, now Lanthorn), it is a genuinely distinct center from Athlone Towncentre and shouldn’t be conflated with it.

That distressed-portfolio acquisition, a US investment group buying six Irish regional centres for roughly a quarter of their pre-crash valuation, reflects how thoroughly the 2007-2008 property crash reset ownership economics for mid-market Irish retail, with international capital stepping in years later to acquire assets at valuations local Irish investors could no longer support.