Hammerson, the owner of the Dundrum Town Centre in Dublin, has confirmed plans to construct 889 apartments in Dundrum.
A subsidiary of Hammerson, Dundrum Retail GP DAC , is consulting with An Bord Pleanála to construct the 889 apartments on the site of the old Dundrum shopping centre on Main Street. Consultation is to continue until December 6th.
At that stage, after examining an outline of the plans in consultation with planners from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the appeals board will advise Hammerson if the scheme forms a reasonable basis for a strategic housing development (SHD) application or requires amendment.
It will then be open to the Hammerson subsidiary to lodge a fast-track planning application under the SHD system. No details are yet available concerning the number or height of the apartment blocks in the proposed development.
The anticipated application is expected to form part of a number of planning applications to be lodged by developers under the SHD system in the coming months as the process is due to expire in February of next year.
The SHD process allows developers to bypass local authorities and the appeals board is required to deliver decisions 16 weeks after applications have been lodged.
Separately, another developer has entered consultation talks with the appeals board for an even larger development in the capital.
A notice published by the appeals board says that developer Gerry Gannon’s company, Gerard Gannon Properties, is to seek planning permission to construct 2,718 residential units in Malahide.
The Belcamp Hall scheme would consist of 2,233 apartments, 485 houses, two creches and all associated site works.
Formal application
The consultation period for that application will also conclude on December 6th, before the lodging of the formal SHD application.
The publication of the two notices comes as Richard Barrett’s Bartra has been refused fast-track planning permission for a SHD application for 142 apartments at the Tolka Industrial Park on Ballyboggan Road in Dublin 11.
The appeals board refused planning permission after pointing out that the site was zoned for employment/enterprise.
The board said that any residential proposal for the site should be subsidiary to the main employment-generating uses and not conflict with its employment/enterprise zoning.
The board also said that the proposal had failed to satisfy this policy requirement. Dublin City Council also recommended refusal on these grounds.
The board inspector in the case, Karen Kenny, also recommended that planning be refused as the scheme would be premature pending the completion of a review of the zoning for the area and would set an undesirable precedent for the “ad-hoc and piecemeal development” of employment/enterprise zonings.
