32 storey tower proposed for Jurys Ballsbridge Site

Is 32 a magic number!

It would seem so – 32 by Treasury, 32 by the OPW, 32 by Mountbrook…maybe its just a nationalist thing.

But 32 at Ballsbridge? Dublin is going to like pretty mistmatched by the end of all this – where’s the structure to the skyline? Taking proposals, and not necessary their planning result – you have 16 @ Glasnevin, 40 @ Cherry Orchard, 28 @ Sandymount, 32 @ SJRQ, 32 @ Kilmainham, 26 @ Donnybrook and wasn’t there another pretty tall proposal for Tallaght? And that’s only the half of it. But then again I just keep thinking Moscow and London – I don’t want to see Dublin make the same mistakes other cities have whilst caught up in a frenzy of proposals. Frankly, the quality of design to boot has only been so-so. Perhaps the Sandymount and U2 designs, for me at least, stood out over the likes of the Reddy scheme by Treasury near Grand Canal and the Shay Cleary ‘adventure’ at Santry Cross for example.

But lexington – havent you read the comments of Mr Dunne. This scheme will be ‘akin to the top apartments in Manhattan’ and surely that means a new Chrysler Building rising in our midst

@StephenC wrote:

But lexington – havent you read the comments of Mr Dunne. This scheme will be ‘akin to the top apartments in Manhattan’ and surely that means a new Chrysler Building rising in our midst

Ooooh, jeez, yeah…well when you put it like that… :rolleyes: 😀

Well the opportunity was missed to mass higher buildings in the docklands. Seems it’ll be higgledy piggeldy high rise all round.

Um… what is this 32 storey “fact” being based on? Elsewhere the proposal is merely described as “high rise” and in some cases the tower element will rise to a whopping 30m!!! Clearly dwarfing the existing structures!!!
I am very worried that 32 storeys is the “new 60m”.

Sean Dunne (Mountbrook Homes) has openly declared his intent for 500 or so apartments on the site, among other things. He hopes the 32-storey tower will entail a great number of 4,000sq ft apartments guiding near the 1m euro mark. Mr. Dunne himself is a resident of the Ballsbridge area – so clearly he doesn’t seem to have a problem with this height of building in his backyard. I hear he’s scouting for an ‘internationally’ renowned architect to aid with the design.

Not much shocks me, but I’d be lying if I said the 260m euro winning bid on the 4.83acres was a jaw-dropper for me. I just think its crazy – but clearly, if Mr. Dunne values the site at that, I hope sincerely it works out for him. For that price tag you could have purchased 5x the land elsewhere and developed an entire new ‘community’ which could have become a new niche address and provided all the same intentions that Mountbrook have planned for Ballsbridge. Hmmm.

Regarding the height I think Mr Dunne is getting confused with his Bolands Mills site on Barrow St which could accomodate a relatively tall building, the residents groups within this section of Ballsbridge are not only anti high-rise they are also extremely well funded and have access to a quantum of pro-bono legal advice. This will be one to watch from the side-lines with great interest.

Re: 4000 sq ft apartments around the million euro mark, I would imagine that 1000 sq ft apartments with car parking will sell for around that mark existing second hand values in the area are around 800-900 per sq ft and for new build they would I expect fetch more. I’d say that the scheme would be most successful going for a mix of single professionals and ex-pats who want a one bed in Dublin 4 with 550 sq ft apartments making roughly 500k excluding parking spaces that I imagine will break all records coming in at excess 80k.

The price of the small number of signature penthouses is anyones guess but I’d say that the fit out of the kitchen and bathroom will cost more than a 3 bed semi in Kildare.

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Property tycoon Derek Quinlan is potentially interested in making a bid for Ireland’s largest hotel group Jurys Doyle (JDH.I: Quote, Profile, Research), currently valued at around 1.1 billion euros, a spokesman said on Monday.

“He is interested. He is monitoring the situation. It would be a logical investment for the type of firm that it is,” the spokesman for Quinlan’s investor group, Quinlan Private, said. He declined to comment on the likelihood of a bid.

A source familiar with the situation said recent media reports of an imminent bid from the former tax inspector turned property tycoon were inaccurate.

Last month, Jurys (JDH.L: Quote, Profile, Research) agreed to recommend an informal offer from Irish-based Precinct Investments after it revised its proposal for a fourth time to 17.50 euros a share, compared to a previous approach at 16.50 euros.

Precinct, which took Ireland’s Gresham Hotel Group private last year, has until Friday afternoon to table a formal bid.

At 1515 GMT, Jurys shares were trading up 0.85 percent at 17.70 euros. The stock price has risen 46 percent since rumours of a possible bid first surfaced in early May.

Following a couple fly-bys in helicopter – Sean Dunne’s Mountbrook Homes are a step closer to appointing a chief design team for his now infamous purchase that is Jurys Ballsbridge & Towers hotels. The record setting purchase (which may be due for an addition) is subject to a design competition being co-organised by the RIAI and Padholme, the Mountbrook SPV to which the site purchases were signed. 3 firms are understood to have been narrowed from a list of between 12 and 20 entrants. Among the entrants Bucholz McEvoy Architects, O’Mahony Pike Architects and Murray O’Laoire are all understood to have input. Word is that Mr. Dunne will be clear for buildings rising to 9-storeys in height as part of his development plan, but 32-storeys (as originally intended) was most unlikely. Provision of a tower as high as 17-storeys may be feasible at the site’s core, but would be subject to design evaluation. Mr. Dunne had expressed intentions for anywhere up to 500 high-class residential units on the exclusive site.

He’s changed his mind a bit. I still think he’s planning to do the 500 apartments but now he wants a hotel, pubs, restaurants and some offices on the site. i suspect his plan was to have the hotel taking up the first 10-15 storeys of the 32 storey tower he had planned (and he was planning that) with apartments overhead. Views would be amazing from up there.

@lexington wrote:

He hopes the 32-storey tower will entail a great number of 4,000sq ft apartments guiding near the 1m euro mark.

The smallest apartment will be at least e1.25 million, an apartment of that size will be 10 million plus

From Village Magazine – http://www.villagemagazine.ie/article.asp?sid=1&sud=38&aid=1730

Greasy Till by Matt Cooper
by Matt Cooper
Thursday, May 4, 2006

Winner alright

If there were to be a competition to name the builder most liked by Fianna Fáil’s senior politicians then it’s a fair bet that Sean Dunne would be the winner, despite a long list of contenders. Dunne is a regular at Fianna Fáil’s annual fundraiser at the Galway Races, like so many other multi-millionaire builders. However, he is seen regularly in the company of ministers at various functions, particularly the likes of Charlie McCreevy (whose palatial country house he built) and Brian Cowen.

When he married his second wife, journalist Gayle Killalea, in the summer of 2004 he hired the controversial Irish-owned tax-incentive yacht, the Christina O. According to the definitive report of the event – a full page by Anne Harris in the Sunday Independent – McCreevy offered his best wishes over a speakerphone for everyone to hear. Twenty minutes later the Taoiseach came on the line. “Dunner, you and I go back a long way. I wish I could be there,” Anne Harris reported Ahern as saying to the assembled audience. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come but I would have been more trouble to you than I’d be worth.”

Two years ago, Dunne was merely a highly successful builder of housing estates and apartment blocks. He prospered as the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats government made little other than vague gestures towards somehow reining in the extraordinary house-price inflation that has characterised its nine years of rule.

Now, however, Dunne has gambled vast sums on a project of extraordinary ambition. Village readers are familiar with his land acquisitions in Ballsbridge in Dublin 4. He spent €380m on buying Jurys Hotel and the Berkeley Court, to give him less than seven acres of land on which to build, once those establishments are demolished. According to reports, he wants to buy the Hume House office development from Irish Life to add to the site and another Office of Public Works-owned property, the Faculty Building. His plan to buy all the land in this sector of Dublin 4 was thwarted by Ray Grehan’s purchase of the two-acre veterinary college site for the extraordinary price of €171m.

This monopoly-style game of land acquisition continued last week when he teamed up with Hibernian Insurance to buy AIB’s headquarters (opposite the RDS) for €378m. It is believed Dunne paid about €200m for four blocks of commercial space and 2.5 acres of vacant land, with Hibernian getting the other four blocks. It seems that, if planning permission is obtained, Dunne will demolish the existing buildings to build taller offices or apartments, or a combination of both.

Taller is the key word. To profit Dunne must build upwards. There is talk of Manhattan-style buildings in Dublin 4, to accommodate Knightsbridge-style levels of consumption. An elite playground for the wealthy of modern Ireland made up of luxury apartments, swish shops, expensive restaurants and five-star hotels.

Apparently, his plans for the hotel site will be revealed within the next month. A major, international, architectural competition is quietly under way to draw up financially suitable plans. The expectation is that they could propose apartment blocks as high as 32 storeys, the Berkeley Court is just nine storeys high. This may be just a softening up of expectations, but experts say it is hard to see anything working commercially at less than 20 storeys. There may also be a little matter of preservation orders over the trees that border the two hotels.

But what do the planning authorities make of all of this? Little is being said about the social and environmental consequences of these plans. Does Ireland want the construction of an elite enclave for the super-rich? (Or does it have that already in D4, making the nature of further development irrelevant?) Will there be social and affordable housing on 20 per cent of the land, for example, or will Dunne compensate Dublin City Council by building such accommodation for the riff-raff elsewhere? Maybe Dublin should be a high-rise city, but has anyone in authority made this decision? And if so, should such high-rise be restricted to areas like the docks, instead of being allowed in leafy suburbs already struggling to cope with traffic volumes, or to overlook existing houses?

Few of these questions have been asked as yet. It is as if everyone is in awe of the sums of money involved and fascinated by the scale of Dunne’s ambition. Clearly, Dunne has had many successes in the past, and has the money to use as downpayments on these investments and to attract banks to lend the balance (probably as much as 90 per cent, which reduces his risk). But past successes – in a booming market – do not guarantee future successes. What would the consequences for the banks and the heart of Dublin be if he fails? And what would happen to the character of Dublin if he succeeds?

Dunne is likely to lobby hard to get his way. He has to do that because the bet he has taken is enormous. As well as the cost of purchasing the land, he has to finance eventual construction costs and all other legal and technical fees associated with bringing the idea to fruition. But it has been estimated that he could spend €1.2bn in Dublin 4 over the next ten years before he generates real returns to repay the banks and reward himself. And he needs the property boom to continue if he is to sell lots of €1m plus apartments.

One wonders what Ahern, Cowen and other ministers make of their friend’s ambitious plans to reshape the landscape of Dublin 4. Will they support, object or affect neutrality, as if this is merely a commercial matter of no real interest to politicians? Will friendship with Dunne influence their thinking? Eventually, of course, it will come down to the planners, and what they think is in the best interests of the development of the city. And we can have every confidence that they’ll make the right decisions, oblivious to all factors of wealth, influence and begrudgery. Can’t we?

The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm

Quite