Fast-track planning sought for 287 apartments in Stillorgan

Kennedy Wilson has submitted planning documentation to An Bord Pleanála, indicating its intention to deliver 287 apartments on a four-acre site it owns at the exclusive Grange development on the Stillorgan Road in Dublin.

Should the US-headquartered real estate firm’s application for fast-track planning permission be successful, the new apartments, which would be privately let, would be delivered across six blocks ranging in height from one to 11 storeys. This would bring its overall portfolio at the south Dublin scheme to 561 apartments.

Kennedy Wilson accquired its existing holding of 274 of the Grange’s existing 507 units and the four-acre site it now intends to develop for €160 million in June 2018.

The price paid by the company represented a premium of €25 million on the €135 million joint selling agents Knight Frank and Cushman & Wakefield had been guiding when they brought the Grange portfolio to the market.

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The combination of the scheme’s prime location and its attractive rental income attracted considerable interest from institutional investors. At time of sale, one-bed apartments at Grange were renting from €1,400 per month, two-bed from €1,600 and three-bed from €2,200.

Those figures are likely to have increased in the interim. And any newly built apartments Kennedy Wilson might deliver at the scheme will almost certainly command even higher rents by the time they are brought to the market.

In availing of the Government’s temporary fast-track planning system, the US developer could potentially receive a determination on its proposal in as little as 16 weeks.

Kennedy Wilson’s bid to deliver 287 apartments at the Grange represents a significant step up on the vision it outlined for the site only six months ago. Commenting on its plan in its latest annual report, the company said it expected to build 235 units at the Grange at cost of around €41 million ($47 million).

The original 11.3-acre site at the Grange was bought by developer Ray Grehan's Glenkerrin Homes for about €85 million in 2004. Grehan built and sold 323 apartments before the property crash, when the National Asset Management Agency appointed Grant Thornton to finish off two partially built blocks with 174 apartments.

Kennedy Wilson acquired these along with 100 other units distributed across the scheme’s seven blocks when it made its initial investment in the Grange last year.

Since entering Ireland’s burgeoning private rented sector market in 2012, Kennedy Wilson has grown to become one of the country’s biggest landlords with some 2,100 apartments either built or under construction between Dublin and Cork.

Among the residential schemes in the Los-Angeles headquartered firm’s portfolio are Clancy Quay at Islandbridge, Capital Dock in the Dublin docklands, the Alliance Building on South Lotts Road, Sandford Lodge in Ranelagh, and the Elysian Building in Cork.