Dublin city sites for over €4 million

A former IDA enterprise centre and a small site owned by Dublin City Council have city centre zoning and suit a wide range of uses, writes JACK FAGAN

TWO ADJOINING sites of 1.31 acres going for sale in Dublin’s north inner city are likely to be used for a mixed-use development of apartments and commercial buildings.

Estate agent Lisney is seeking offers in the region of €4.05 million for the combined sites which front on to Lower Gardiner Street, Summerhill and Gloucester Place in Dublin 1.

The city centre zoning will allow the planners to take a fairly broad view of the uses envisaged provided the scheme is in line with the council’s regeneration programme for the area.

The largest site of 0.43 of a hectare (1.06 acres) is owned by the IDA and includes the former enterprise centre with 18 individual industrial buildings ranging in size from 55 to 70sq m (592 to 753sq ft).

There is also a security building on site, as well as 24 car-parking spaces.

Maeve Furlong of Lisney is seeking € 3.5 million for the IDA site and a further €550,000 for a corner site of 0.25 of an acre owned by Dublin City Council at Gloucester Place and Gloucester Place Upper which has been vacant for some years.

Although the IDA was originally forced to build a low-rise enterprise centre off Gardiner Street because of objections from local residents, the redeveloped site is likely to accommodate five or six-storey buildings in keeping with the scale of nearby streets and the original tenements on the site.

As well as restricting the IDA to building what looks like a concrete hut, residents also insisted at the time that the adjoining land should be used as a public park – even though there was already a park one block away on Mountjoy Square.

More recently, a children’s playground and tennis courts have been provided on part of the original park now going for sale. Another part of it, not for sale, accommodates the newly opened Lourdes Parish primary and post-primary schools which were built at a cost of €8 million.

The once rundown Gardiner Street has been substantially redeveloped over the past 15 years with a string of apartment blocks following on from the first development by the Cosgrave Group.

Much of the area between Sean MacDermott Street and Busáras has also seen major changes with most of the tenements replaced by office and apartment buildings. A number of firms have relocated to the area from the nearby IFSC because of the substantially lower rents available.

John Fleming Architects, which carried out a study of the Gardiner Street site for the IDA, says the objective of the zoning is “to consolidate and facilitate the development of the central area and to identify, reinforce and strengthen and protect its civic design, character and dignity”.

The firm has suggested a number of options for developing the site with either three or four individual blocks ranging in height up to eight storeys with car-parking at basement level.

One of the plans suggests a 150-bedroom hotel along with 85 apartments, 3,275sq m (35,252sq ft) of retail space, 4,020sq m (43,271sq ft) of offices and 150 car-parking spaces.

Whoever buys the IDA site is also likely to pitch for the quarter-acre being offered for sale by the city council. Lisney says the additional piece of land “may be of interest to purchasers in order to maximise their land holding and to enhance development value”.

The Gardiner Street area has become the main hub for the city’s hostel accommodation in recent years because of its proximity to Busáras and Connolly Station, as well as the city centre. Any new development along the Gardiner Street area is likely to include hostel facilities, as well as cheap hotel accommodation.

Gardiner Street is one of the main link roads between the Dublin docklands, the north city area and Dublin Airport.

Lisney says it is “open to offers” on both sites.