Bord gives green light for new shopping centre in Bray

RetailCentres:An Bord Pleanála has reaffirmed Bray Urban Council's grant of planning permission for a €100 million shopping and residential development in the centre of the town, writes Tim O'Brien.

The Florentine Centre - as the development is to be known - is on a site of just under one hectare, bounded by Main Street, Eglinton Road, Florence Road and Quinnsboro Road.

The centre will feature a new pedestrian street linking Main Street and the Quinnsboro Road, and will incorporate a major shopping area of about 8,000sq m (86,112sq ft).

There will also be 84 homes, a crèche, a community facility and 549 car-parking spaces on three levels below ground.

The main shareholder in the venture is Sean Mulryan's Ballymore which expressed satisfaction at the outcome this week.

Ballymore said it is already in advanced negotiations with a number of Irish and international blue-chip retailers who wish to operate in the new centre.

The planning permission comes just one week after the Pizarro consortium was refused permission by An Bord Pleanála for a major town centre development on the former golf club site, in part because it would attract too much traffic from the "already congested" N11.

Work on the Florentine Centre is to begin almost immediately and, due to the complexity of the construction, building will last up to 24 months.

The new centre will deliver 200 jobs during the construction phase and then approximately 400 jobs will be created in Bray when the centre is open.

Hazel Jones, development director of Ballymore (Ireland), said the company was determined to fast-track every aspect of the development.

"Bray is a rapidly growing town with a catchment area of some 80,000 people. Retailing in the town has not kept pace with population growth and we intend that the Florentine Centre will rejuvenate the Main Street and its surroundings and keep local shoppers in the town," said Hazel Jones.

Bray and District Chamber of Commerce spokesman Jason Cooke said the permission "represents the single most important landmark planning decision to be made by An Bord Pleanála in Bray, and will be the first step towards the rejuvenation of the Bray Main Street and town centre areas."

Ballymore currently has more than 2.2 million sq m (23.68 million sq ft) of projects under development in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, as well as in Ireland and Britain.

Its chairman, Sean Mulryan, founded Ballymore in Ireland in 1982.

The company expanded rapidly and set up its London office in 1992. It opened its first office in central Europe in Prague in 2001.