British pub chain JD Wetherspoon has bought an old church on Abbey Street, which it plans to turn into a gatsro pub.
The company paid €1.5M for the former Baptist church at auction last week. The building, at the corner of the Irish Life Mall, had a guide price of €400,000.
Earlier this year, Wetherspoon bought the nearby old TSB bank for €1.5M.
Wetherspoon says it plans to open thirty pubs across Ireland in the next five years. It already has four on the go in Dublin.
They are The Three Tun Tavern in Blackrock, The Forty Foot in Dún Laoghaire, The Great Wood in Westend Shopping Park in Blanchardstown and The Old Borough in Swords.
The JD Wetherspoon group was founded in 1979 and has 900 bars across the UK.
