THE FLAGSHIP regeneration project for the 30-hectare Grangegorman site in Dublin’s north inner city will definitely go ahead if the project gets planning permission, a Bord Pleanála hearing was told yesterday.
Michael Hand, chief executive of the Grangegorman Development Agency, told the planning hearing much had been said about the recent decision of the Government to postpone funding for the project.
But Mr Hand said exchequer funding for the redevelopment would amount to 20 per cent of the development, and quoted Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn to the effect that the “Government is committed to the long-term funding of this project”.
In the meantime he said there were “multiple” avenues of funding that could be tapped to begin the project, which included the relocation of constituent colleges of Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT); establishing a range of Health Service Executive healthcare facilities on site; and creating a new urban quarter.
Read the article @ The Irish Times
www.bpsplanningconsultants.ie
Showing posts with label grangegorman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grangegorman. Show all posts
Friday, 25 November 2011
Monday, 14 November 2011
New site for DIT faces the axe in cutbacks
THE Government is axing a planned new college for Dublin Institute of Technology on the site of the old Grangegorman hospital.
It will be among a series of projects cut as part of drastic changes to the capital spending programme up to 2016.
Among them are five rail projects on which the State has already spent more than €225m.
Iarnrod Eireann and the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) spent the money planning and designing underground railway systems and Luas light-rail projects for Dublin, which were expected to cost more than €5bn to build.
Read the article at Independent.ie
www.buckplanning.ie
It will be among a series of projects cut as part of drastic changes to the capital spending programme up to 2016.
Among them are five rail projects on which the State has already spent more than €225m.
Iarnrod Eireann and the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) spent the money planning and designing underground railway systems and Luas light-rail projects for Dublin, which were expected to cost more than €5bn to build.
Read the article at Independent.ie
www.buckplanning.ie
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Details of new Dublin 'urban quarter' and campus
THE BLUEPRINT for a €486 million development of a new “urban quarter” and campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) at Grangegorman will be submitted to Dublin City Council within weeks.
Councillors were last night presented with details of the planning scheme which will act as a framework for all future applications for development on the 70-acre former psychiatric hospital site between the north-city neighbourhoods of Phibsboro, Stoneybatter and Cabra.
Once approved, the scheme could allow for the construction of buildings of up to 50m in height.
Applications which adhere to the scheme can be granted directly by the council, and cannot be subject to objections or appeals.
The linchpin of the site is a consolidated campus for 22 of the 27 DIT schools currently housed in 39 locations around the city.
With a 20,000-strong student body the new campus will cater for about 10 per cent of all students in higher education in Ireland.
The site would also accommodate purpose-built mental health facilities and a primary school run by Educate Together for 400 pupils, as well as a high proportion of open amenity and recreational space accessible to the local community.
Some 450 full-time construction jobs will be created for a 10-year period during the development of the site.
In addition, more than 1,100 full-time jobs are promised on completion of the works.
Plans for the site were first announced almost a decade ago. At the time it was thought much of the project could be funded by selling off DIT colleges, but the downturn in property prices means more initial funding will come from the exchequer.
Government approval for the scheme was granted last September, and the new programme for government supports its development “as resources permit”.
The Grangegorman Development Agency last night told councillors that it intended to put the planning scheme on public display this month.
The scheme will be put to councillors again, probably in July, and could then be adopted if there are no objections.
However, the scheme could be subject to an appeal to An Bord Pleanála, a likely scenario as local residents’ organisations have raised concerns in relation to the possibility of tall buildings being constructed on the site.
The new Dublin City Development Plan would allow the construction of buildings of up to 50m at Grangegorman, pending the ratification of the planning scheme which would give the site strategic development zone (SDZ) designation.
The site has a long history of institutional use going back to the 1700s as a mental asylum and a prison. Most recently it served as a home for St Brendan’s hospital under the ownership of the HSE.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Councillors were last night presented with details of the planning scheme which will act as a framework for all future applications for development on the 70-acre former psychiatric hospital site between the north-city neighbourhoods of Phibsboro, Stoneybatter and Cabra.
Once approved, the scheme could allow for the construction of buildings of up to 50m in height.
Applications which adhere to the scheme can be granted directly by the council, and cannot be subject to objections or appeals.
The linchpin of the site is a consolidated campus for 22 of the 27 DIT schools currently housed in 39 locations around the city.
With a 20,000-strong student body the new campus will cater for about 10 per cent of all students in higher education in Ireland.
The site would also accommodate purpose-built mental health facilities and a primary school run by Educate Together for 400 pupils, as well as a high proportion of open amenity and recreational space accessible to the local community.
Some 450 full-time construction jobs will be created for a 10-year period during the development of the site.
In addition, more than 1,100 full-time jobs are promised on completion of the works.
Plans for the site were first announced almost a decade ago. At the time it was thought much of the project could be funded by selling off DIT colleges, but the downturn in property prices means more initial funding will come from the exchequer.
Government approval for the scheme was granted last September, and the new programme for government supports its development “as resources permit”.
The Grangegorman Development Agency last night told councillors that it intended to put the planning scheme on public display this month.
The scheme will be put to councillors again, probably in July, and could then be adopted if there are no objections.
However, the scheme could be subject to an appeal to An Bord Pleanála, a likely scenario as local residents’ organisations have raised concerns in relation to the possibility of tall buildings being constructed on the site.
The new Dublin City Development Plan would allow the construction of buildings of up to 50m at Grangegorman, pending the ratification of the planning scheme which would give the site strategic development zone (SDZ) designation.
The site has a long history of institutional use going back to the 1700s as a mental asylum and a prison. Most recently it served as a home for St Brendan’s hospital under the ownership of the HSE.
Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Sunday, 10 May 2009
High, dry and stranded in north inner-city Dublin
Grangegorman was meant to be a new quarter for the capital, but falling property prices have left the project in doubt, writes News Investigations Correspondent John Downes
Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern with project architect James Mary O'Connor
The plans are ambitious: the complete regeneration of a whole section of north inner-city Dublin, and the transfer of one of the country's largest third-level colleges to a 73-acre site.
If implemented in full, the project at Grangegorman will eventually lead to the relocation of 22,000 Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) students and 2,000 staff from some 40 different locations around the city to a single campus. It will also include a €115m redevelopment of St Brendan's hospital, a mental-health facility owned by the HSE, as well as a major primary-healthcare facility. Overall, the aim is to create a major new city quarter, including schools, social housing for the elderly and parkland and sports facilities.
But the Sunday Tribune has learned that serious questions remain about the viability of a project that was conceived during vastly different economic times.
Back in 2002, when then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced his government had given the green light for phase one of the new DIT campus, it had been hoped construction would start the following year. Assuming phase two of the project would be approved, construction was due to finish by 2010.
Fast-forward seven years, and the Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA) has yet to receive budgetary approval from the minister for education and science, Batt O'Keeffe, to begin implementing its draft strategic plan. It says it now hopes it can start construction on the replacement health facilities in 2010, with a view to having most of DIT transferred there by 2014 and its "core facilities" completed by 2020. All of this is subject to the government deciding that it will allocate the necessary money for the project.
It is currently estimated that it will cost at least €750m to complete the first "core phase" of the DIT's move to Grangegorman, as well as a large proportion of the HSE's planned facilities. If the project as originally envisaged is ever completed, however, the final figure will likely be far higher as other major infrastructural aspects to the project come on stream.
Figures for what these are likely to cost are not yet available, although an early meeting of the GDA in November 2006 was told that the overall cost of the project could be as much as €2bn.
Therein lies one of the major problems facing the Grangegorman proposals.
More than 50% of the costs of the DIT project are expected to be financed primarily through the sale of buildings currently owned or occupied by DIT.
The sale of these properties is due to take place from 2011 onwards, meaning much depends on whether the property market improves by this time.
Yet according to a confidential valuation of DIT's buildings, obtained by the Sunday Tribune, these were worth just €223m in July of last year. While this excludes two properties, one on Slaney Row and the other at Camden Row, this figure equates to less than one third of the estimated €710m cost of building phase one of the DIT project, as calculated in early 2008.
It is also a far cry from the 50% or more which the sale of these buildings was expected to contribute – and fails to take account of the collapse in property prices in the intervening period.
Add to this the lack of funds available for lending in the current property market, and questions are likely to have been raised in government circles as to whether DIT's properties can be relied upon when calculating overall budgets for the project. This means that the government may be required to make up any shortfall – hardly an ideal scenario in the current economic climate.
Perhaps understandably, supporters of the project point to the fact that construction costs have also declined significantly during this time. For example, the core part of the DIT campus, comprising all of its 27 schools, will amount to 140,000sq m of development. The GDA says the cost of this phase has dropped from €710m to approximately €635m currently. All prices are inclusive of VAT.
The GDA's chief executive, Gerry Murphy, told the Sunday Tribune that this significant fall in the cost of the project was due to a reduction in construction pricing and "value engineering" which the GDA and its technical advisers have carried out.
"The majority of the... costs will be funded by DIT itself through sale of its property portfolio, its savings on lease costs and other savings arising from its consolidation on site. Other DIT developments on site, such as student accommodation, will be self-funding," he said.
But does the project have the full support of the minister for education? Asked if Batt O'Keeffe was committed to providing all necessary resources to facilitate DIT's move to the Grangegorman site, his spokesman would only say he was committed to "examining the proposals" put forward by the GDA in relation to its draft strategic plan. These were sent to government six months ago.
The project could be facing other challenges too. Frustrated local residents cannot necessarily be relied upon to 'buy in' to the project.
Pirooz Daneshmandi of the Grangegorman Residents Alliance is an elected member of the GDA board. He accuses the GDA, which has allocated significant sums to public-consultation exercises and information campaigns, of "continually undermining" residents' contributions and not listening to their suggestions.
Just one of these is that consideration be given to saving money by turning Bolton Street College and an empty hotel in Smithfield into relatively low-cost student accommodation –rather than building high-rise student accommodation at Grangegorman.
"Our community has only ever looked for a meaningful role in this major project in order to avoid the mistakes made in Smithfield, Ballymun and elsewhere," he says.
Sunday Tribune
www.buckplanning.ie
Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern with project architect James Mary O'Connor
The plans are ambitious: the complete regeneration of a whole section of north inner-city Dublin, and the transfer of one of the country's largest third-level colleges to a 73-acre site.
If implemented in full, the project at Grangegorman will eventually lead to the relocation of 22,000 Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) students and 2,000 staff from some 40 different locations around the city to a single campus. It will also include a €115m redevelopment of St Brendan's hospital, a mental-health facility owned by the HSE, as well as a major primary-healthcare facility. Overall, the aim is to create a major new city quarter, including schools, social housing for the elderly and parkland and sports facilities.
But the Sunday Tribune has learned that serious questions remain about the viability of a project that was conceived during vastly different economic times.
Back in 2002, when then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced his government had given the green light for phase one of the new DIT campus, it had been hoped construction would start the following year. Assuming phase two of the project would be approved, construction was due to finish by 2010.
Fast-forward seven years, and the Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA) has yet to receive budgetary approval from the minister for education and science, Batt O'Keeffe, to begin implementing its draft strategic plan. It says it now hopes it can start construction on the replacement health facilities in 2010, with a view to having most of DIT transferred there by 2014 and its "core facilities" completed by 2020. All of this is subject to the government deciding that it will allocate the necessary money for the project.
It is currently estimated that it will cost at least €750m to complete the first "core phase" of the DIT's move to Grangegorman, as well as a large proportion of the HSE's planned facilities. If the project as originally envisaged is ever completed, however, the final figure will likely be far higher as other major infrastructural aspects to the project come on stream.
Figures for what these are likely to cost are not yet available, although an early meeting of the GDA in November 2006 was told that the overall cost of the project could be as much as €2bn.
Therein lies one of the major problems facing the Grangegorman proposals.
More than 50% of the costs of the DIT project are expected to be financed primarily through the sale of buildings currently owned or occupied by DIT.
The sale of these properties is due to take place from 2011 onwards, meaning much depends on whether the property market improves by this time.
Yet according to a confidential valuation of DIT's buildings, obtained by the Sunday Tribune, these were worth just €223m in July of last year. While this excludes two properties, one on Slaney Row and the other at Camden Row, this figure equates to less than one third of the estimated €710m cost of building phase one of the DIT project, as calculated in early 2008.
It is also a far cry from the 50% or more which the sale of these buildings was expected to contribute – and fails to take account of the collapse in property prices in the intervening period.
Add to this the lack of funds available for lending in the current property market, and questions are likely to have been raised in government circles as to whether DIT's properties can be relied upon when calculating overall budgets for the project. This means that the government may be required to make up any shortfall – hardly an ideal scenario in the current economic climate.
Perhaps understandably, supporters of the project point to the fact that construction costs have also declined significantly during this time. For example, the core part of the DIT campus, comprising all of its 27 schools, will amount to 140,000sq m of development. The GDA says the cost of this phase has dropped from €710m to approximately €635m currently. All prices are inclusive of VAT.
The GDA's chief executive, Gerry Murphy, told the Sunday Tribune that this significant fall in the cost of the project was due to a reduction in construction pricing and "value engineering" which the GDA and its technical advisers have carried out.
"The majority of the... costs will be funded by DIT itself through sale of its property portfolio, its savings on lease costs and other savings arising from its consolidation on site. Other DIT developments on site, such as student accommodation, will be self-funding," he said.
But does the project have the full support of the minister for education? Asked if Batt O'Keeffe was committed to providing all necessary resources to facilitate DIT's move to the Grangegorman site, his spokesman would only say he was committed to "examining the proposals" put forward by the GDA in relation to its draft strategic plan. These were sent to government six months ago.
The project could be facing other challenges too. Frustrated local residents cannot necessarily be relied upon to 'buy in' to the project.
Pirooz Daneshmandi of the Grangegorman Residents Alliance is an elected member of the GDA board. He accuses the GDA, which has allocated significant sums to public-consultation exercises and information campaigns, of "continually undermining" residents' contributions and not listening to their suggestions.
Just one of these is that consideration be given to saving money by turning Bolton Street College and an empty hotel in Smithfield into relatively low-cost student accommodation –rather than building high-rise student accommodation at Grangegorman.
"Our community has only ever looked for a meaningful role in this major project in order to avoid the mistakes made in Smithfield, Ballymun and elsewhere," he says.
Sunday Tribune
www.buckplanning.ie
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Consultants chosen for redevelopmentof 73-acre Grangegorman site
The WK Nowlan Consortium has been chosen as framework consultants for the proposed development of the 73-acre Grangegorman site in Dublin city.
The appointment has been made by the State-run Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA) which is to oversee the redevelopment of the site to accommodate all of the Dublin Institute of Technology colleges in one location and provide new primary and community health facilities for the Health Service Executive. There will also be new amenities for the local community.
The successful consortium consists of team leaders WK Nowlan & Associates, chartered surveyors and management consultants; Davis Langdon PKS, quantity surveyors; and Farrell Grant Sparks, business advisers and consultants.
The GDA recently selected architects/planners Moore Ruble Yudell from the US, in association with Irish firm DMOD, as the winners of the Grangegorman master plan design competition.
Preparation of the master plan for the site has just commenced with the aim of transforming it into a dynamic new city quarter to include the integration of education, health and other community facilities. The former Dublin city manager, John Fitzgerald, is chairman of the GDA while the chief executive is Gerry Murphy, who previously worked with the National Roads Authority. Peter Coyne, former chief executive of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, is to lead the winning consortium after joining the WK Nowlan consulting team. Bill Nowlan, chairman of the company, said that the nature and growing complexity of urban development required the input of the most skilled professionals to ensure that projects were delivered on time, on budget and on quality.
The Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
The appointment has been made by the State-run Grangegorman Development Agency (GDA) which is to oversee the redevelopment of the site to accommodate all of the Dublin Institute of Technology colleges in one location and provide new primary and community health facilities for the Health Service Executive. There will also be new amenities for the local community.
The successful consortium consists of team leaders WK Nowlan & Associates, chartered surveyors and management consultants; Davis Langdon PKS, quantity surveyors; and Farrell Grant Sparks, business advisers and consultants.
The GDA recently selected architects/planners Moore Ruble Yudell from the US, in association with Irish firm DMOD, as the winners of the Grangegorman master plan design competition.
Preparation of the master plan for the site has just commenced with the aim of transforming it into a dynamic new city quarter to include the integration of education, health and other community facilities. The former Dublin city manager, John Fitzgerald, is chairman of the GDA while the chief executive is Gerry Murphy, who previously worked with the National Roads Authority. Peter Coyne, former chief executive of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, is to lead the winning consortium after joining the WK Nowlan consulting team. Bill Nowlan, chairman of the company, said that the nature and growing complexity of urban development required the input of the most skilled professionals to ensure that projects were delivered on time, on budget and on quality.
The Irish Times
www.buckplanning.ie
Tuesday, 15 May 2007
Planning permission sought for apartments in Dublin 7
Pascal Conroy’s Albion Properties is seeking planning permission for 220 apartments and 5,135 square metres of office space at a 1.88-acre site next to St Brendan’s Hospital in Grangegorman in Dublin 7.
The company is also seeking to develop a creche, just under 290 square metres of shops, a 178 square metre gallery and a restaurant on the site.
The site incorporates part of Grangegorman Lower, Blake Villas, 22-27 North Brunswick Street and is next to the Richmond apartment complex.
All of the existing structures on the site are to be demolished under the plan, and just under 23,700 square metres of development would then be built, including 44 one-bed units, 164 two-beds and 12 three-beds.
The development would be spread between six blocks, ranging in height from two to 11 storeys. If approved, it will also include 184 car parking spaces and 200 bike spaces.
The site is next to the former psychiatric hospital, St Brendan’s, and adjoining land which is to be redeveloped by DIT as its new campus.
An international design competition to masterplan the development of Grange gorman has been undertaken, and expressions of interest closed last month.
The masterplan will include the development of a new campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology, along with health and other community facilities at the 74-acre site near Smithfield in Dublin city centre.
The site is in two lots located on either side of the Grangegorman Road. It extends from the North Circular Road as far south as North Brunswick Street and from Broadstone to the rear of Prussia Street. It is zoned for recreational, institutional and community use.
Albion Properties also owns the Phibsboro shopping centre, which is to be given a €75 million redevelopment. The 1967 shopping centre is the second oldest in the country.
It was developed by Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, who also owns Brown Thomas.
The shopping centre, which is on a 1.23-acre site, is to triple in size. It should also benefit from the redevelopment of Daly mount Park, which has been bought by Liam Carroll.
He is expected to include a significant amount of retail outlets when he eventually seeks permission to build on the site.
Albion is also developing Ridge Hall, a scheme of apartments on three acres in Ballybrack in south Dublin, and renovating and extending three listed Georgian buildings on Parnell Square and converting them into apartments and medical suites.
Its other projects include apartments on Distillery Road in Dublin 9 which overlook Belvedere College’s sports grounds, and a scheme of 49 apartments on the Lucan Road in Chapelizod.
Sunday Business Post
The company is also seeking to develop a creche, just under 290 square metres of shops, a 178 square metre gallery and a restaurant on the site.
The site incorporates part of Grangegorman Lower, Blake Villas, 22-27 North Brunswick Street and is next to the Richmond apartment complex.
All of the existing structures on the site are to be demolished under the plan, and just under 23,700 square metres of development would then be built, including 44 one-bed units, 164 two-beds and 12 three-beds.
The development would be spread between six blocks, ranging in height from two to 11 storeys. If approved, it will also include 184 car parking spaces and 200 bike spaces.
The site is next to the former psychiatric hospital, St Brendan’s, and adjoining land which is to be redeveloped by DIT as its new campus.
An international design competition to masterplan the development of Grange gorman has been undertaken, and expressions of interest closed last month.
The masterplan will include the development of a new campus for the Dublin Institute of Technology, along with health and other community facilities at the 74-acre site near Smithfield in Dublin city centre.
The site is in two lots located on either side of the Grangegorman Road. It extends from the North Circular Road as far south as North Brunswick Street and from Broadstone to the rear of Prussia Street. It is zoned for recreational, institutional and community use.
Albion Properties also owns the Phibsboro shopping centre, which is to be given a €75 million redevelopment. The 1967 shopping centre is the second oldest in the country.
It was developed by Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, who also owns Brown Thomas.
The shopping centre, which is on a 1.23-acre site, is to triple in size. It should also benefit from the redevelopment of Daly mount Park, which has been bought by Liam Carroll.
He is expected to include a significant amount of retail outlets when he eventually seeks permission to build on the site.
Albion is also developing Ridge Hall, a scheme of apartments on three acres in Ballybrack in south Dublin, and renovating and extending three listed Georgian buildings on Parnell Square and converting them into apartments and medical suites.
Its other projects include apartments on Distillery Road in Dublin 9 which overlook Belvedere College’s sports grounds, and a scheme of 49 apartments on the Lucan Road in Chapelizod.
Sunday Business Post
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