BALGADDY FAVOURED OVER QUARRYVALE
AS SITE FOR LUCAN/CLONDALKIN TOWN CENTRE
BY AN BORD PLEANALA
PLANNING DEFEAT FOR SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL AND GROSVENOR HOLDINGS
Plan
to turn Liffey Valley into town centre rejected
Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, The Irish Times
The
plan by South Dublin County Council's to turn the Liffey Valley shopping centre
at Quarryvale into a "town centre" for Lucan-Clondalkin has suffered
a serious setback from An Bord Pleanála.
Ruling on appeals over plans by Treasury Holdings Ltd to develop a rival site
at Balgaddy - designated as the future town centre since 1972 - the board
said it considered this site as "generally suitable for development of
the type proposed".
The county council had refused planning permission for Treasury's scheme,
which included a major shopping centre as well as a hotel, multiplex cinema,
gym, bar-restaurant, car-parking and more than 1,000 apartments on the site.
However the appeals board has concluded that Balgaddy is the right site for
such a development, given its "central location in relation to development
in the greater Lucan-Clondalkin area and its proximity to the Dublin-Cork
railway line".
Other factors which influenced the board included the Strategic Planning Guidelines
for the Greater Dublin Area, the Government's Retail Planning Guidelines and
the county council's own development plan.
The board said it had also taken into account the "limited impact"
of the proposed development on the national road network and to forthcoming
improvements to transportation infrastructure serving the area, such as upgrading
the railway line.
However as currently designed, the scheme proposed by Treasury "is not
acceptable and requires modification". The board has given the developers
until February 20th to devise a new scheme which would meet its requirements.
In its ruling, the board said the present proposal would result in over-development
of the site in a form unsuitable for a town centre and its "monolithic"
appearance would not be conducive to integration with other schemes on adjoining
sites.
In particular, it took exception to the fact that the proposed town centre
would be elevated on a podium, saying this form "would constitute a barrier"
to such connection and would also inhibit flexible, phased development of
the site.
The board also complained about the "preponderance of dead frontage"
other than on the main pedestrian route through the centre. The width of the
proposed streets and the height of the buildings also meant there would be
"little sunlight".
It described the residential element as excessively dense and queried why
a large number of student housing units had been included, given that the
Balgaddy site "is not readily accessible" from existing third-level
colleges in the Dublin area.
Residential blocks were "too close together" and would suffer from
overshadowing. Deck access to these blocks was also seen as unsuitable, "having
regard to considerations of privacy and prevention of anti-social behaviour".
Other criticisms related to inadequate car parking, lack of community facilities
and "vague" information on phasing as well as the integration of
the scheme with a future railway station and bus corridors.
Treasury Holdings greeted the board's ruling with "extreme satisfaction",
saying it felt vindicated on the central issue of Balgaddy versus Liffey Valley
and it had "every confidence" that it would be able to meet the
board's requirements.
A spokesman for Grosvenor Holdings said the London-based company had just
seen the board's ruling and would obviously be considering it. But Grosvenor
believed it amounted to a "comprehensive rejection" of Treasury's
existing plans.
Balgaddy saga not over yet
Urban
Development An Bord Pleanála's ruling in the long-running Quarryvale
v Balgaddy saga has thrown the cat among the pigeons, writes Frank McDonald,
Environment Editor.The
Irish Times
The Duke of Westminster was bound to be miffed this week at the news that
An Bord Pleanála has come down in favour of developing the major town
centre for Lucan-Clondalkin at the site in Balgaddy, designated for such a
scheme as long ago as 1972.
The Duke, reputedly the fourth richest man in Britain, holds a 50 per cent
interest in the Liffey Valley shopping centre at Quarryvale, through Grosvenor
Holdings - and seemed set on course with his partner, Owen O'Callaghan, to
develop it as the future "town centre".
Barkhill Ltd, the Grosvenor-O'Callaghan consortium, had the unqualified support
of South Dublin County Council's planners.
Their view was that it made more sense to turn Quarryvale into a proper centre
because it already exists rather than implement the original plan.
How Quarryvale came to be developed at all, of course, is one of the central
issues being investigated by the Mahon (formerly Flood) Tribunal - in particular,
lobbyist Frank Dunlop's claim that £112,000 was paid to councillors
at the time of its rezoning in 1991-1992.
Liffey Valley was the product of the most corrupt decision in Dublin's planning
history, but it came to be seen by the planners as a fait accompli, something
that could be turned into a town centre even though it is located on the edge
of the "town" it would supposedly serve.
Those who had an interest in the designated town centre site at Balgaddy,
notably Treasury Holdings, were determined to put it up to the planning authorities
to stand by the original plan and used every argument in the book to advance
their case - with little success, until now.
South Dublin County Council, committed as its executive was to promoting Liffey
Valley as an alternative, also used every argument in the book to dismiss
the Balgaddy option and flatly refused permission for Treasury's scheme on
what the developers regarded as spurious grounds.
However, hot on the heels of having its plans to redevelop the Stillorgan
shopping centre shot down by An Bord Pleanála for the third time, Treasury
has won an unexpected, albeit interim, victory in its do-or-die struggle against
Barkhill and the county council's planners.
For the board has just ruled that Balgaddy is, after all, a "generally
suitable" site on which to develop the Lucan-Clondalkin town centre,
including the quantum of retail space proposed. And that ruling has thrown
a cat among the pigeons in this long-running saga.
According to the appeals board, Balgaddy is the right site for such a development,
given its "central location" in relation to development in the greater
Lucan-Clondalkin area, its proximity to the Dublin-Cork railway line and the
provisions of strategic and retail planning guidelines.
The board said it also had to take into account the "limited impact"
of the proposed development on the national road network and forthcoming improvements
to the transportation infrastructure serving the area, such as upgrading the
railway line which runs right by the Balgaddy site.
However, it also made clear that the scheme proposed by Treasury, as currently
designed, "is not acceptable and requires modification", and has
given the developers until February 20th to redesign it - principally by reducing
its density and omitting its podium form.
Not surprisingly, Treasury Holdings greeted the board's ruling with "extreme
satisfaction", saying it felt vindicated on the central issue of Balgaddy
versus Liffey Valley and it had "every confidence" that it would
be able to meet the board's requirements for a more sympathetic design.
The developers will have to complete a 12-point shopping list of issues raised
by the board, produce a new set of drawings and a revised environmental impact
statement and probably submit themselves to a resumed oral hearing at which
all of these matters would be fully ventilated.
The Grosvenor-O'Callaghan consortium, which owns a 60-acre site adjoining
Balgaddy that was once touted as a future national stadium, needless to say,
objects strenuously to Treasury's plans, arguing that Liffey Valley represents
the best available option for town centre designation.
Three years ago, however, An Bord Pleanála refused planning permission
for a scheme that would have doubled the size of Liffey Valley, largely on
the basis that it would aggravate traffic congestion on the M50 - as the Dublin
Transportation Office had argued in its submission on the appeal.
The board's latest ruling in favour of Balgaddy indicates that it would not
be minded to grant permission for any fresh plan to aggrandise Liffey Valley,
however much this is favoured by South Dublin's planners. In fact, it suggests
that Barkhill would face another refusal on traffic and other grounds.
A further obstacle for Barkhill is that the members of South Dublin County
Council decided without a vote in March of last year not to proceed with a
proposal to rezone Liffey Valley as a "major town centre" until
the Mahon Tribunal has reported - probably in three years time.
The council is due to produce a new draft county development plan next month
and it will be interesting to see whether that document reflects its planners'
current preference for Liffey Valley, in the face of An Bord Pleanála's
decision to uphold the plan devised more than 30 years ago.
Reacting to what the board had to say, a spokesman for Grosvenor said its
ruling amounted to a comprehensive rejection of Treasury's existing plans
and noted that there was a limited time-frame in which they could be re-cast
in a form acceptable to the appeals board.
"In our view, Treasury doesn't have a sufficiently large site to accommodate
the amount of development they are proposing in the form that An Bord Pleanála
wants to see - in fact, we believe it's near impossible for them to achieve
the scale the board is looking for."
Ultimately, given that Treasury is clearly trying to pile too much onto its
relatively small site, it might have to negotiate with Grosvenor and other
large property owners in the area, such as Dublin City Council, to agree on
how any town centre might be developed in the Balgaddy area.
And with the economy no longer as strong as it was during the "Celtic
Tiger" era, the real question is whether Dublin can continue to absorb
acres of new retail space, wherever it is located.
So Treasury's victory on the issue of principle, if not of form, may turn
out to be Phyrric.
02/10/2003