NO OTHER development in Irish planning history has generated as many objections as the proposed Sonas Centre on the site of the Phoenix Park racecourse in Dublin.
Altogether, Fingal County Council received 19,231 objections to the £300 million scheme, some from as far away as Switzerland and the US.
Two Ministers of State - Ms Joan Burton (Labour) and Mr Austin Currie (FG), both TDs for Dublin West - are also among a long list of people and organisations who have made submissions to An Bord Pleanala, and who expect to have their say at an oral hearing which starts on Monday.
What they object to is Ogden Entertainment (Ireland) Limited's plan to redevelop the racecourse to provide a 63,000-seat stadium, an indoor arena with a capacity of up to 15,000, a 349-bedroom hotel, a national conference centre to cater for up to 2,000 delegates, and a casino with space for the same number of slot machines.
By any standard, this is a major integrated development proposal, as Mr Len O'Reilly, former chief planning officer of Fingal County Council, noted in his extremely thorough 32-page report last October on the multitude of issues involved. He also made it clear that the scheme had to be judged "as a single entity".
After considering every aspect of it, Mr O'Reilly recommended strongly that planning permission be refused. His view was not shared by the Fingal county manager, Mr Davy Byrne, who wanted the Sonas Centre to go ahead because of the huge impact it would have on the fortunes of his administrative area - not least on the jobs front.
Mr Byrne could also not afford to ignore Ogden's own forecast - specifically mentioned as a "planning gain" in its submission - that the scheme would boost the council's rates revenue by at least £3 million a year. But as it was a material contravention of the county plan, the decision rested with the councillors rather than the manager.
BY a majority of 14 votes to nine last October, they rejected the Ogden scheme. Only one of the local councillors, Mr Sean Lyons (Ind), supported the developers. The rest, some of whom had wavered initially, were well aware of the local furore it had generated, especially in Castleknock, and voted accordingly.
Mr Byrne was thus constrained to refuse permission for a scheme which he personally favoured. However, there are significant discrepancies between the terms of his refusal and the reasons put forward by Mr O'Reilly, which, incidentally, were missing from the public file for two weeks and only reinstated at his request.
The refusal signed by Mr Byrne said the development would have an "injurious" impact on nearby houses, whereas the former chief planning officer, who took early retirement at Christmas after just two years in the post, said it would "seriously injure" and even depreciate residential property in the immediate vicinity.
Another reason for refusal, recommended by Mr O'Reilly, was omitted in its entirety, viz, that the proposed Sonas Centre, because of its height and scale, would be "seriously detrimental" to the visual amenities of the Phoenix Park. But since the park lies within Dublin Corporation's area, Mr Byrne felt that he could discount it.
Mr O'Reilly also recommended that permission be refused because Ogden had submitted no evidence of its ability to deliver on four proposed "park-and- ride" facilities, remote from the racecourse site, without which the development would "create serious traffic congestion". This wording, too, was omitted from the final version.
HOWEVER, the fundamental reason for refusing permission - the zoning of the site as recreational open space and greenbelt - survived intact. The decision pointed out that it formed part of "an important visual break" between Dublin city and Blanchardstown and that it was the council's policy to protect the special amenity value of this green belt.
It also cited as precedents previous decisions by An Bord Pleanala rejecting various development proposals for the flat and open racecourse site in an effort to preserve this visual break. The three major refusals relate to a 1990 scheme for loo houses, a 1989 scheme for 593 houses and another 1989 scheme for a 150-bed hotel.
Against this background, it will surely take a monumental effort by Ogden and its planning consultants to win permission from the board for the massive development now proposed. In particular, they will have to overturn the negative thrust of Mr O'Reilly's detailed analysis as well as the strident objections from local residents.
Their case has been made even more difficult by the recent controversial decision by the Minister for Tourism and Trade Mr Kenny, to abort a developer competition for the national conference centre - in which Ogden was an entrant - in favour of settling on the RDS in Ballsbridge as the best site for this £25 million facility.
Thus, with one of its main anchors gone, the Sonas Centre can no longer be seen as a unity. As Mr O'Reilly noted: "The project has been designed so that the various constituent elements interact both functionally and visually to form an integrated whole. Consequently, the removal of any major element would require a redesign of the entire project."
Dealing with each individual element, the former chief planning officer's report seeks to put their scale in perspective by comparing them with the TEAM Aer Lingus hangar at Dublin Airport. Even the hotel/conference centre/casino building would be both higher (at 32 metres) and longer (at 270 metres) than the hangar, although not quite as wide.
The huge stadium, predictably, would be much larger than TEAM's massive hangar, though it would be located only 130 metres from the nearest house in Chesterfield, Castleknock. Given that it would also be a huge traffic generator and that there would be provision on site for 3,500 cars, the promised "remote" car parks for a further 8,000 are seen as essential.
The Office of Public Works has said it is "extremely concerned" about the impact of stadium-related traffic on the park. The Minister of State at the Departments of Just ice and Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton, believes that indiscriminate parking on its roads and grassed areas would result in "the potential destruction of large parts of the Phoenix Park as we know it".
To minimise the danger of widespread traffic congestion, Ogden concedes that the capacity of the Navan Road between Ashtown and the M50 interchange would have to be increased and the cost of this and other necessary road improvements "will fall to the development". The estimated bill is £2.4 million
