A Galway-based developer is set to make a renewed application to develop an apartment complex at the former Waterford Infirmary building. The plan by Sertonbury Ltd to build 106 apartments on the site of one of Waterford's most prominent and historic buildings was rejected this month by An Bord Pleanala on foot of a third-party appeal. The board was unhappy with the scale of the proposed development.
However, the chairman of Sertonbury, John O'Dolan, hopes a reduced-scale development will be granted planning permission. Waterford Corporation, which approved Sertonbury's application, says the building's survival is in doubt unless a viable use is established for it. Since closing as a hospital in 1987, the infirmary - a grade A listed building under the 1994 Waterford city development plan - has been vandalised and is now in a serious state of disrepair.
The Sertonbury application was for 74 two-bed and 32 one-bed apartments, 26 of which would be in the existing infirmary building. The remainder would be provided in two five-storey wings projecting from the rear of the building.
Only one appeal against the development was lodged with An Bord Pleanala, by a planning consultant, Ms Stephanie Taheny, and her husband, Mr Noel Frisby, who runs a construction company in the city. The couple live beside the infirmary on John's Hill.
Ms Taheny, however, says she was acting on behalf of a number of residents in the area, who are in favour of seeing the building being developed but object to the size of the proposed extensions. "We would be delighted to see apartments going in there, but not to the extent that the architectural integrity of the building is totally lost."
The Bord Pleanala inspector who dealt with the appeal, Niall McDonnell, supported those concerns, pointing out that the extensions would take up three times the floor space of the original building. The new wings would also project 2.5 and four metres beyond the width of the infirmary.
"I consider that all these factors combine to make the new extensions more dominant or at least as important as the existing listed building," he said in his report. "This would be totally inconsistent with the preservation of the existing building, which after all, gains a lot of its importance from its existing prominent and singular image in the townscape."
Mr O'Dolan, however, was disappointed with the decision having secured the approval of Waterford Corporation and, he insists, the majority of local residents are in favour of the original proposal. Representatives of Sertonbury have met Ms Taheny and Mr Frisby to see if agreement can be reached on a reduced-scale development, and further discussions are likely. Even in the absence of further objections, it will take at least three months for a new application to go through the planning process.
In the meantime, security which Sertonbury had been providing at the building for the past year has been withdrawn. But if agreement with all sides can be reached, Mr O'Dolan says work can commence on the site as soon as permission is granted.
