Town Centres:A planning application has been submitted for a large retail, residential and office development in the centre of Athy.
Adjacent to Emily Square, Dunnes Stores has already agreed to anchor the €50 million development, according to the promoters Gwynne and Paddy Thomas and George Sothern.
The planning application for the Abbey, Emily Square, Athy, involves a six-acre site in the heart of the town, with frontage to the River Barrow. The plan includes retail, apartments and leisure facilities, and the company intends to restore the listed historic abbey on the site and develop the public walkway and a small marina along the riverfront.
The anchor unit in the development has 6,150sq m (66,200sq ft) and there is provision for another 20 shops and restaurant units ranging in size from 63.8sq m (687sq ft) up to 344sq m (3,703sq ft).
The commercial development also offers 396 underground car-parking spaces and should create about 250 jobs, according to the developers.
There will be 38 residential units including two one-bedroom apartments, 10 two-bedroom apartments, 10 townhouses, 11 there-bedroom apartments and five penthouse apartments. The great majority of the units will have views of the River Barrow.
The abbey is a protected period house built on the site of an abbey from ancient times of which little or nothing remains. While the abbey site is zoned town centre retail/commercial in the Athy Development Plan 2006-2012, the designation includes objectives for the sensitive refurbishment of the abbey house and its adaptation into modern use. With this in mind the developers have decided to restore the abbey and restore the surrounding stone wall. This will provide an opportunity for 490sq m (5,274sq ft) of office space.
This restoration will also open the gardens to the public. Since the gardens are on either side of the access road to the new centre, the developers hope that this will become a new leisure area which could host events, such as a farmers' market, as it runs down to the River Barrow.
The development will be spread over three buildings each with a mix of retail and residential.
