Carton estate to be turned into five-star golf and country club

The US company due to open a five-star hotel on the edge of College Street, in Dublin 2, is to turn the Carton Demesne, at Maynooth, Co Kildare, into a luxury golf country club. It will be in direct competition with the K Club, the exclusive country club also located in Co Kildare. Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide is to develop a 140-bedroom hotel and two golf courses in conjunction with the Mallaghan family, which owns the 1,070-acre estate.

Details of the scheme are due to be announced at a press conference in Dublin on Thursday of next week. The development is expected to get under way early this year because the 10-year planning permission granted by An Bord Pleanala is due to run out in October, 2002. Permission was obtained by the Guinness-owned Gleneagles Group but it later decided against proceeding with the £65 million project after the consortium of Irish and international banks involved had insisted that Guinness plc should guarantee the borrowings. The Guinness board refused to agree to such an arrangement.

Starwood is one of the largest resort operators in the world with 650 hotels in 70 countries. It is also the largest real estate investment trust in the US. In addition to the Westin chain of hotels, it also controls the Sheraton and Caesars subsidiaries.

Its European resort venues include Tunberry in Scotland, where the British open golf championship has been staged. The five-star hotel is to be built out of sight of Carton House, one of the finest country houses in Ireland which has been unoccupied for a number of years. The promoters are to refurbish the house and convert it into 12 suites. Two 18-hole golf courses are to be designed by international golfing stars Colm Montgomery and Mark O'Meara.

There is also planning permission for 150 houses among the extensive woodlands on the estate. Starwood is to lease and operate the five-star hotel being built on a triangular site bounded by College Street, Westmoreland Street and Fleet Street in Dublin. It is due to open for business early next year. The £35 million hotel is being developed by Treasury Holdings, which is involved in the proposed Spencer Dock project in the Dublin docklands.