€2 billion development planned for Bray site

TownCentres: An application to develop the former grounds of Bray Golf Club into a €2 billion mixed-use scheme is about to be lodged, writes Jack Fagan

Bray town centre is to be transformed over the next decade with a major new shopping centre, office scheme, residential area and leisure complex.

A top notch consortium is to lodge a planning application today for a €2 billion redevelopment of the former 62-acre grounds of Bray Golf Club which is located along the River Dargle on the Dublin side of the town.

The planning application comes more than 18 months after the consortium bought the site for almost €90 million from housebuilders O'Dwyer Nolan who spent five years assembling the land, arranging rezoning and providing an alternative 18-hole golf course for the club.

The Piazarro consortium includes the Kelly, McCormack and Flynn families, the construction company Pierse, the Newlan Group and Durkan New Homes. It will be seen as a strong consortium capable of delivering a high quality scheme.

The strategic location of the land immediately beside the town of Bray will enable the consortium to embark on one of the most comprehensive mixed-use developments yet seen in an Irish town. It will include 51,295sq m (552,134sq ft) of gross lettable retail space, 1,273 one, two and three-bedroom apartments, 5,771sq m (62,118sq ft) of office space, an eight-screen cinema complex with a seating capacity for 1,536 people, a 124-bedroom hotel, bars and restaurants with floor areas of 2,308sq m (24,843sq ft), two crèches, medical surgeries and community buildings. Almost 4,000 car-parking spaces will be provided over two basement levels.

There are plans to provide two new pedestrian bridges over the river to link the new development with the main street and the Dart station. It is also planned to landscape the river and provide a riverside walk and flood protections works.

The master plan also sets aside more than 17 acres for a football ground and an educational facility. The community facilities will include a school, crèches and a daycare centre for the elderly.

The development programme is likely to take up to 10 years to complete. It has been designed to enhance the appeal of Bray by including a public square with attractive cafés, restaurants, bars and specialist shops. HKR Architects and BDP Architects are handling the mammoth scheme.

Jim Duffy of HKR said he had worked on a number of similar schemes throughout the world where the issue was the same - how to expand urban settlements whilst retaining their vitality and mix of uses. It made sense to concentrate new development on a reasonable scale around existing transport nodes and town centres.

Sheffield, Liverpool, Vienna, Oxford, Barcelona and Cambridge were good case studies of similar development in Europe.

The development opportunities presented by the availability of the old nine-hole golf course immediately beside Bray has long been recognised by Bray Urban District Council. As far back as 1998, the zoning of the site was changed and the council brought in town planners Brady Shipman Martin to draw up a local area plan setting out the type of development that would be of most benefit to the town. That will now form the framework of the overall scheme.

The commercial agents for the scheme will be Hamilton Osborne King and HWBC while the residential agents will be Sherry FitzGerald New Homes and Hooke & MacDonald.