The Big Developers:The Cosgraves met the challenge of inner city Dublin - then took on Dún Laoghaire residents, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
The Cosgrave brothers - Michael, Peter and Joe - like to make their mark. That's what they did with all of their early housing schemes, such as Custom Hall in Gardiner Street, where the roundel plaques in its pediments are all inscribed, in Kilroy Was Here-style, "Cosgrave Bros Dublin 1992".
But the branding of Custom Hall was more than justified. Although it is a humdrum piece of neo-classical pastiche, with five-storey blocks of smallish flats standing on stilts above basement car parking, it took a lot of courage to build in Gardiner Street at that time. Certainly, no other developers were prepared to do so.
After all, the junction with Seán MacDermott Street was known as "Handbag Corner" because of the dexterity of local thieves in snatching bags from cars while women drivers were stopped at the traffic lights. Custom Hall pioneered the regeneration of Gardiner Street, changing the image of the area.
The Cosgraves are about to make a much bigger mark in the middle of DúLaoghaire, Co Dublin. In mid-2001, they agreed to purchase the old borough's golf club on a 78-acre site straddling Upper Glenageary Road in exchange for a new 300-acre course in Ballyman, near Enniskerry, and a douceur of €20 million to clinch the deal.
Although highly controversial locally, 80 per cent of the club's members voted to accept the offer at an emergency general meeting in June 2002. Work later proceeded on laying out the expansive 27-hole course around Carrigollan Hill as well as building a new 2,500 sq m clubhouse, fitness centre and 12-bay driving range.
The developers' only setback was that they had to concede a public right of way through the site, which Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council insisted had been in existence since "time immemorial". They also had to pay the ESB to divert a power line through nearby Carrigollan Woods, cutting a swathe through its forestry.
Meanwhile, the Cosgraves had to ensure that the old golf club in DúLaoghaire was rezoned for development - a step the county council initially refused to make. This led former county manager Derek Brady to issue a "health warning" on the county development plan, saying that insufficient land had been zoned for housing.
It was only after then minister for the environment Martin Cullen intervened to direct the council to amend its plan in March 2004 that councillors - at the end of a marathon meeting which went on until 4am - voted to rezone the golf club site, designating 60 acres for development, with 18 acres set aside for public open space.
Last February, when Cosgraves finally lodged a planning application for the first phase of the scheme - 626 apartments and 230 houses, including 171 "social and affordable" homes - the county council received more than 400 objections, mainly on the grounds of density, traffic, "ghettoisation" and the loss of so much green space.
The master plan, by architects McCrossan O'Rourke Manning, includes a 5.5-acre public park with a lake as its centrepiece, as well as new pedestrian and cycle paths. After requesting further information on issues regarding water, waste, site planning, traffic management and access to the Dart, the council approved the plan in September.
Although councillors had decided that a local area plan should be drawn up to guide the development of this part of Dún Laoghaire - something that should have been done at the outset - the view taken by senior officials was that they were legally obliged to deal with the planning application. It will now go to An Bord Pleanála.
By the mid-1990s, Cosgraves had a proven track record in building houses and apartments in the Dublin area. Schemes designed for them by Ambrose Kelly's Project Architects included Ha'penny Bridge House on Ormond Quay, with its kitsch reference to the bridge over its entrance, and the fussy-looking Pembroke Square on Grand Canal Street.
They built a remarkably similar apartment block at Charlemont Street, on a site which had been derelict for years while in the hands of Albert Holdings, a company controlled by civil engineering group Murphy International. Now within a stone's throw of the Luas line to Sandyford, it also adjoins the headquarters of ACC Bank and the Hilton Hotel.
Other schemes from the 1980s and early 1990s include the Noddyland-style Sweepstakes, in Ballsbridge, and the disappointingly underscaled Donnybrook Manor on Morehampton Road, as well as Shrewsbury in Ballsbridge, The Orchard in Ranelagh; Temple Manor in Celbridge, Chesterfield in Castleknock, and Christchurch Hall on High Street.
In 1996, Cosgraves bought St Helen's House in Booterstown for £2 million, taking it off the hands of Seán Dunne, who had toyed with turning the listed 18th century building into a hotel and then offices. With the addition of a bedroom block to the northeast, it has been trading as the Radisson hotel since 1998 and is still owned by the brothers.
A bigger coup was their acquisition in 1996 of a 22-acre site in the middle of Blanchardstown and its subsequent development as the West End Retail Park; it enabled them to "poach" such prime tenants as Next, Burton and Wallis from Green Property's nearby shopping centre by offering them much more trading space for roughly the same rent.
But their most talked-about scheme was Ardilea Wood, a gated enclave of 10 luxury faux-Edwardian detached houses off Roebuck Road in Clonskeagh, finished in 2000. It didn't seem to matter that the houses faced a massive concrete retaining wall or that the prices were just as steep; the houses were perfectly pitched to nouveau riche aspirations.
In 1998, the Cosgraves paid £8 million for the Howth Lodge Hotel on Claremont Road in Howth, with the intention of replacing it with more than 130 apartments. But this scheme was strongly opposed by local residents and An Bord Pleanála refused permission in March 2000, citing the height, scale, bulk and "monolithic form" of what had been proposed.
A revised plan for a less dense development of 54 apartments was later approved, and these trophy flats - many with superb sea views - sold like hot cakes in 2004 at prices ranging from €695,000 to €2.5 million. The proceeds went towards funding the purchase of a prime residential site on Thormanby Road, also in Howth, for €15 million - €1 million per acre.
At George's Quay in the city centre, the brothers astonished competitors and conservationists alike by engaging big-league architects Skidmore Owings and Merrill to produce a sculpted glass office tower, more than 100 metres high, flanked by two tall apartment blocks with a covered shopping mall that would have brought some street life into the area.
But although Dublin City Council decided to approve this scheme, it was shot down on appeal in 1999 - largely because of its visual impact on the Custom House and Trinity College.
In the end, Cosgraves had to revert to building an improved version of Keane Murphy Duff's 1990 plan for Irish Life. The only real downside was that this consists solely of offices.
In 2001, they suffered another major setback when An Bord Pleanála rejected plans for a major business park on a 193-acre site at Fassaroe, outside Bray, mainly because it would have been heavily car-dependent. Since then, they've agreed to part-finance an extension of the Sandyford Luas line to Fassaroe, instead of having it run directly into Bray.
The Cosgraves own the largest land bank in the area, some 600 acres, and the Luas extension from Cherrywood is crucial to opening it up for development. Otherwise, as Dick Roche, Wicklow Fianna Fáil TD, warned in 2001, the consequences of building up to 7,000 new homes in Fassaroe/ Ballyman as well as a business park generating 6,000 jobs would be "truly horrific".
Meanwhile, the company is developing a 50-acre site at Santry Demesne bought several years ago from IDA Ireland - for 12 logistics and retail warehousing units, four five-storey office blocks, 35 enterprise "starter units" and three motor showrooms. All told, this scheme will provide 77,000 sq m of space with on-site parking for more than 1,900 cars.
In Drimnagh, it had to fight off local opposition to plans for eight blocks of apartments and "live-work units" on a clapped-out industrial estate. Residents said the scheme would have a "huge impact" visually and environmentally on Drimnagh Castle and the low-rise housing in the neighbourhood.
But An Bord Pleanála decided that it could go ahead.
Like other cash-rich developers, the Cosgrave brothers have also been investing in Britain. Their first deal, in January 2006, involved two retail buildings at Caxtongate in Birmingham (bought for £80 million sterling). This was followed by two blocks near Oxford Circus in London (£136 million sterling) and the Liberty shopping centre in Romford, Essex (£281 million sterling).
Also last year, they snapped up the redundant Dublin Exchange Facility, behind Jurys Inn on Custom House Quay, for €42 million - partly to avail of some €6.5 million in unclaimed tax allowances. Two years earlier, they bought 20 acres from St Gerard's in Bray, Co Wicklow, for €30 million, further enriching the fee-paying school, with the aim of building more houses.
The Cosgrave brothers just keep getting on with it, leaving their mark on housing schemes such as Clearwater Cove in Dún Laoghaire, Derrynane Square on Dorset Street, Gracepark Manor in Drumcondra, Hampton Square on the Navan Road, St James Wood on South Circular Road (all Dublin), Riversdale in Bray, Co Wicklow and Quay Gate in the Laganside area of Belfast.
