The Park, Carrickmines

If you need some groceries in Foxrock, you just send the au pair up to Thomas’s to pick up some organic champagne or truffle oil. http://www.thomasoffoxrock.ie/index.html There is a pharmacy, dry cleaners, restaurant, boutique, wine bar etc in the village.

If you are a pleb living in postal Foxrock and you need some baked beans or poptarts, your house is likely located beside Dunnes Stores in Cornelscourt where your every lumpen need may be catered for 24/7.

However, if you are a speculator, who owns a landbank off Glenamuck Road and you want an excuse to get your fields rezoned for housing, then you will want to make friends with a few of the local councillors so that they can zone you up a bunch of retail in a field outside Carrickmines.

John Bailey is a very decent man with a life devoted to honesty and integrity and you can read his various saintly exploits here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bailey_(Irish_politician)

Hutton, perhaps the “ecomentalist” tag was undeserved in your case. However, I do feel it actually applies to certain elements who are definately against any form of development. The current economic decline just plays into their hands and raises more excuses for objecting to any form of development.

I agree with you that many aspects of planning in Ireland stink to high heaven. I just don’t think this is one of them. Its perhaps natural, but regretable, that after the shenanigans of the past any Councillors involved in rezoning are now smeared.

In my opinion, whilst over development and corruption are obviously bad. The kind of extremist anti-rezoning, anti-highrise anti-everything policies that alot of Councilors have made a career of can be just as damaging!

The big push is to establish a retail/town core at Cherrywood, once the Luas is completed. However, given Liam Carrols financial situation, potential litigation regarding the site, question marks over Government ownership and the recession, nothing will be built there for a long time. In fact, despite Gormley pontificating about Cherrywood being appropriate as the designated growth centre, attempts in recent years to begin to develop this area in line with increased public transport have actually been stymed by none other then the Green Party and An Taisce. Both of whom strenuously objected to office developments on the grounds of height!! And were successful.

My point was. At 10,000sq/m its a very small development in a Dublin context. We are not talking about a potential Liffey Valley or Dundrum. If The Park ( such an imaginative name) is already a destination for certain types of retailing, why not also include a supermarket as an option. That will actually save in terms of car journeys.

Lastly, I am not a planning official. Nor am I employed in the property industry or a developer. Heaven forbid:)

C

@Frank Taylor wrote:

you just send the au pair up to Thomas’s

Tut, tut, tut. Frank, for sake of clarity – it’s the recession, even the good burghers of Foxrock can no longer afford the Au Pair; it’s just the Au One that they have to get by with these days – this is the Foxrock definition of a recession :p

@thebig C wrote:

Hutton, perhaps the “ecomentalist” tag was undeserved in your case. However, I do feel it actually applies to certain elements who are definately against any form of development. The current economic decline just plays into their hands and raises more excuses for objecting to any form of development.

I agree with you that many aspects of planning in Ireland stink to high heaven. I just don’t think this is one of them. Its perhaps natural, but regretable, that after the shenanigans of the past any Councillors involved in rezoning are now smeared.

In my opinion, whilst over development and corruption are obviously bad. The kind of extremist anti-rezoning, anti-highrise anti-everything policies that alot of Councilors have made a career of can be just as damaging!

The big push is to establish a retail/town core at Cherrywood, once the Luas is completed. However, given Liam Carrols financial situation, potential litigation regarding the site, question marks over Government ownership and the recession, nothing will be built there for a long time. In fact, despite Gormley pontificating about Cherrywood being appropriate as the designated growth centre, attempts in recent years to begin to develop this area in line with increased public transport have actually been stymed by none other then the Green Party and An Taisce. Both of whom strenuously objected to office developments on the grounds of height!! And were successful.

My point was. At 10,000sq/m its a very small development in a Dublin context. We are not talking about a potential Liffey Valley or Dundrum. If The Park ( such an imaginative name) is already a destination for certain types of retailing, why not also include a supermarket as an option. That will actually save in terms of car journeys.

Lastly, I am not a planning official. Nor am I employed in the property industry or a developer. Heaven forbid:)

C

thebig C, I appreciate your retraction re “ecomentalists”. However I must dispute much of your core analysis. The current situation isn’t simply a recession in the old way we might have known it 20 years ago – there simply is not and can never be a return to the gross speculative bubble during the last decade for which we are all paying for now. That wasn’t an economic cycle, it was madness, a fraud on a grand scale masking a future theft – the results of which are best currently seen by the closure of swimming pools and other facilities in working class areas of Dublin city.

The current economic decline just plays into their hands and raises more excuses for objecting to any form of development.

Actually I don’t believe this on two counts; firstly it is not simply “current” by my reasoning above; we need a better stick to measure the progress of society by than crude GDP, and the the UN has a number of them – such as HDI, the Human Development Index. Secondly, the recession actually provides a new justification by way of promising “jaaaaaaahhhhbbs”, i.e. supposed jobs – a cruel, hollow, cherry that in reality masks the actual decline of further loss of jobs that will occur by way of sucking indigenous Irish retail commerce away from existing town centres such as Dun Laoghaire, and instead the british Tesco, who predominantly pay taxes elsewhere, have already said they want to set up at Quarryvale Nua. At this stage I suspect that if the developer, Michael Cotter, was to suggest that he could create jaaaaahhhbs by way of opening a concentration camp – perhaps a US style Guantanamo franchise – he could get the backing of some councillors.

Regarding Cherrywood, it is actually not Liam Carroll but primarily Noel Smyth – who has already threatened legal action if the Quarryvale Nua proceeds and eats his lunch. It’s not that I give a damn about him, I don’t, and actually I believe this whole row is utterly farcical because in any event, you are right thebig C, nothing of significance is going to get built. Not that that’s going to stop existing land owners from moving to protect the mythical speculation value on existing plans, whether or not they go in to NAMA.

The icing on the cake for me in all of this mess is the way the Luas has been perverted so as to no longer follow the former Harcourt Street railway bed, but instead, end up in the middle of nowhere, west of Bray and not connected to the main Dart line. Oh well at least Two Cars Cuffe and his GP mates are happy, with a toy that has less than half the capacity of Dart on a line that is already over capacity further down. Idiots 😡

@Frank Taylor wrote:

The sad thing is that Bailey has spent huge amounts over the past decade promoting himself and is now likely to be elected to the next Dáil on a FG upswing. Maybe he’ll be the next planning minister.

nah. can’t see that happening. He already had a shambolic tilt at Leinster House in 2002. Anyway this is more politics.ie than archiseek !!!!

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0422/1224268876105.html

Proposed district centre at Carrickmines, by Henry J Lyons Architects

Dublin site plan more complex than crony capitalism

FRANK McDONALD

Plans for two competing shopping centres in the south of the county are at the heart of a dispute between councillors and the Minister

IT HAS been described by Ciarán Cuffe, the new Minister of State in charge of planning, as an example of “crony capitalism” and a reversion to the highly-questionable rezoning practices of the 1980s.

But the determination of a majority of councillors in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown to upgrade a site in Carrickmines – owned by Michael Cotter’s Park Developments – from neighbourhood to district centre status is a more complex story about where new shopping facilities should be located.

The Park in Carrickmines is a large housing scheme developed over several years, which already has a “retail park” with the usual range of outlets, but no supermarket to serve the estimated 18,000 people living in the catchment area, which includes Ballyogan, Glenamuck, Kilternan and Stepaside.

Park Developments got an uncontested planning permission in 2008 to develop a neighbourhood centre at The Park, consisting of a supermarket and a small number of ancillary retail outlets as well as almost 300 apartments. It also has approval for a major office scheme, of which two block are already built.

In 2008, after Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council published its latest draft development plan, Park Developments and Tesco made submissions requesting that the neighbourhood centre should be upgraded to district centre status, given that the planned population of its catchment is put at 35,000.

The initial response from the planners – in an August 2008 report to the council by county manager Owen Keegan – was quite open. They recommended that the council should “reassess possible reclassification within the retail hierarchy of Cherrywood, Sandyford Business Estate and Carrickmines”.

Later, however, the planners recommended that no change be made to the existing neighbourhood centre zoning at The Park. Their rationale was that, if it was reclassified as a district centre, it would take business away from the proposed district centre at Cherrywood, where the council itself has an interest.

The “new town” planned for Cherrywood is embryonic at this stage. Like Carrickmines, it has a projected population of 35,000. But unlike Carrickmines, there are very few people living there so far. The biggest landowner is Dunloe Ewart, which is controlled by Liam Carroll, the now debt-laden property developer.

Last July, Mr Keegan said in a High Court affidavit that the county council was very concerned that the €57 million it had put into a 1997 joint venture agreement with Mr Carroll’s companies to develop the Cherrywood lands for a science and technology park was “in jeopardy” because of their insolvency.

“One would assume from those publicly expressed concerns that the reality is that the council knows full well that there is absolutely no possibility of any significant development of any kind happening out in Cherrywood for a very long time,” said Tim Crowley, project director for Park Developments.

Noting that Cherrywood had been designated as a strategic development zone (SDZ), he forecasted that it could be up to eight years before this planning process would be completed – as had happened in Adamstown, near Lucan.

It was thus a long-term project compared to The Park in Carrickmines.

But Mr Cuffe strongly defended Cherrywood, saying a huge public investment had already gone into providing infrastructure there, including a new terminus for the Sandyford Luas line. “Now is the time to make it happen, not to threaten its viability with another shopping centre a mile down the road.”

To him, the site in Carrickmines “bears an uncanny resemblance to Liffey Valley in terms of its location at the edge of where people are living, rather than in the heart of a community”. By contrast, the proposed Cherrywood district centre was “very well-placed in terms of its future population”, he said.

A spokesman for Minister for the Environment John Gormley, who directed Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillors to reverse their rezoning decision on Carrickmines, speculated that the development of Cherrywood would be “top of the list for development” when it falls into the hands of Nama.

Planning consultant John Spain, who advises Park Developments, said “there was a concern [in the Department of the Environment] that councillors were acting against the manager’s advice.

“But the planning rationale for ministerial intervention is not there, because this is not an ‘out-of-town’ shopping centre.”

Tesco obviously sees the value of having a large supermarket at The Park, given its location in a relatively affluent catchment area.

Under the deal it has signed with Park Developments, the British-owned multiple would contribute €70 million to the construction costs in return for becoming the anchor store.

Mr Crowley said that the proposed centre had been “consistently supported” by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent councillors on the basis that it was “entirely sustainable in planning terms” and that schemes of this kind “in the midst of large areas of new housing” were in line with the Greater Dublin Area retail strategy.

He noted that councillors from both the Green Party and the Labour had, in contrast, voted against the inclusion of a district centre at Cherrywood in the 2004 Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Development Plan and had also previously voted against the Dundrum Town Centre, which opened in 2005.

In terms of public transport access, The Park at Carrickmines would be served by the Ballyogan Woods stop on the extended Sandyford Luas line, which would be located some 200 metres from the proposed district centre. Cherrywood would be better served by Luas, with a stop directly in front of its proposed centre.

To avoid a further confrontation with Mr Gormley, the councillors who support the Carrickmines rezoning have proposed capping the size of the proposed centre at 20,000sq metres (215,280sq ft), rather than the 25,000sq metres (269,100sq ft) originally proposed.

It remains to be seen whether this will satisfy the Minister.

The nub of this is that if Tesco go to Carrickmines and Dunnes have Cornelscourt then who will anchor Cherrywood? There are only two major supermarkets in Ireland given that M & S don’t do full format and Superquinn have gone down the Waitrose route of 10,000 – 15,000 sq foot stores. Aldi or another discounter for Cherrywood clearly doesn’t add up. Clearly those supporting Cherrywood need to outline what their timetable to building a scheme is as it appears there is a clear need for supermarket space. You have got to admire Cotter’s deal making skills to get a viable retail scheme to this stage albeit that it may fall victim to that tiger era risk called planning risk.

There is already a Dunnes anchored shopping centre on the other side of Ballyogan Road (less than half mile from the Park, Carrickmines.
http://www.leopardstownsc.ie/list-of-shops.php

The purpose of new retail zoning is simply to justify new residential zoning.

What is it about seaside towns and the lack of sustainable rengeneration; this is not just an Irish concept but all but the uber-fshionable former port towns have seriously lagged over the past 15 years; I would add that the Royal Marine is also part of the problem when it should have been a massive asset to the town given its views and history. The key issue for Dun Laoghaire is that until Dundrum came along it was the largest retail provision in the county; recent research in the UK indicates that many retailers would be a lot more profitable trading only the top 30-50 retail locations in the UK (by footfall) versus the 200 shops most have in their portfolios; taking that on an Irish scale and Dun Laoghaire simply will never get over the opening of Dundrum unless they find a coherent niche market.

Frank what size is the Dunnes in Ballyogan? would it be more 2,000 sq m or 6,000 sq m; the rest of the scheme looks very much neighbourhood provision?

Charity shops are cyclical; they won’t last once the market picks up; but the challenges are tougher for local authorities as there is a huge structural change in retail beyond the economic cycle this time; the only retail fad expanding at the moment appears to be chocolate shops which are trying to replace a long list of contracting uses not least of which include banks, card shops, mobile phone shops. I would hate to see Dun Laoghaire as a budget retail location;

Depressing website time!!! http://www.chavtowns.co.uk/

You would like to see the council encouraging an outbreak of pop up shops in conjunction with NCAD and the local art college.