A planning application for the derelict Boland’s Mill site at Grand Canal Dock is expected to be made “in the next month or so” by receivers acting on behalf of Nama, according to deputy Dublin city planning officer John O’Hara.
It would refurbish a stone building on the site as well as an old warehouse fronting on to the dock, restore a two-storey Georgian building on Barrow Street, and replace the concrete silos with three slender blocks no higher than the nearby Millennium Tower.
Given its location in the "Google quarter" (not an official designation of the area, O'Hara emphasises), the scheme is bound to become one of the hottest tickets in town – after the value of the site plummeted by more than 80 per cent as a result of the property crash.
The proposed development, once envisaged as an exclusively office-based scheme, will now include a residential element and must also provide for a “civic space”, measuring at least 40m x 20m, with a new pedestrian link from the site to Ringsend Road.
The next scheme likely to move is a joint venture between Nama and US investor Kennedy Wilson for the former Hammond Lane site between Hanover Quay and Sir John Rogerson's Quay, right next door to the site earmarked for the U2 tower at Britain Quay.
This whole area will become much more accessible after the construction of a new bridge over the mouth of the river Dodder.
So far, however, there is no specific timetable for this significant project, the cost of which would have to be met by Dublin City Council.
