Re: Re: well what about the developments popping up in the shannonside ?

Latest on the Redemptorists development on the South Circular Road

Order asked to revise plans for 300 units

Traffic congestion feared if original plan is passed.

THE Redemptorist Order has been asked to withdraw its planning application for almost 300 apartments at the rear of the existing monastery on the SCRd. Cllr Joe Leddin criticises the application as “totally unacceptable” on traffic grounds alone.

Opposition also comes from Cllr Pat Kennedy, who advises Limerick City Council to refuse it “in its present form”.

Paying tribute to the Redemptorists for the significant contribution it has made, particularly to the educational life of Limerick, he says: “We should do our best to accommodate them but it must be for a suitable development”.

Cllr Leddin said it is his understanding that City Hall engineers have concerns regarding the “massive negative impact on traffic,” that the development would generate.

“It’s obvious that the scale and the impending impact on traffic volumes within the vicinity, arising from the construction of 286 apartments, would be catastrophic,” he says.

Cllrs Maria Byrne, Jim Long, Pat Kennedy and Leddin complained that traffic congestion is also a daily issue on such adjacent streets as Gerard Street, Quinn Street and New Street.

“If approved, this proposed development, which would generate some 400 additional cars, will lead to utter chaos throughout the entire area, which, apart from being residential, also has a number of primary and secondary schools located nearby”.

The councillors stress that they are not opposed to a refurbishment of the monastery building and the construction of a new school and a creche, but that the number of apartments envisioned is too dense.

Continued Leddin:”I, along with my colleagues, were successful in our efforts to oppose a similar type application to the rear of Punch’s Bar, in favour of a low density development of semi-detached houses. I see as much more suitable to this location the development of a low density 56-house complex”.

Acknowledging that the development as it stands would create significant traffic problems in the area, senior planner, Dick Tobin, said that it is the planning department’s experience that when an application goes to an Bord Pleanala “it goes into a lottery”.

“We will be asking the applicants for further information, particularly in relation to traffic and the scale of the development, but it is not likely that we will consider this application any further until we get it into some more acceptable form,” he said