The 200-year-old Bloomfield Hospital and grounds off Morehampton Road in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, is to be redeveloped as one of the city's most exclusive residential enclaves with houses costing up to £2.5 million (3.17m) each.
The Galway-based property developer Radical Properties Ltd has agreed to build a 65-bedroom nursing home on a 10-acre site at Stocking Lane in Rathfarnham in part exchange for the 4.8-acre Donnybrook complex which is owned by the Religious Society of Friends - otherwise known as the Quakers. As well as providing the new nursing home and a meeting house for the Quakers at an overall cost of around £18 million (22.86m), Mr Gerard Barrett's Radical Properties is also understood to be paying the society about £4 million (5.08m).
For that he gets a superb Dublin 4 development site offering privacy and seclusion just off Morehampton Road. The main entrance is located on Bloomfield Avenue, at the side of Sachs Hotel, and there is also a pedestrian access on to Leeson Park Avenue, a quiet Victorian road with two rows of two-storey redbricks. Bloomfield adjoins the Royal Hospital, which also has vast grounds.
The Bloomfield Hospital is currently based in two 18th and 19th century buildings which were listed for preservation after they went for sale even though they are quite obviously of no architectural merit. However, the new owner plans to restore them, convert them into 25,000 sq ft of offices and integrate them into the new scheme. The only interesting buildings on the site, Bloomfield House and Swanbrook House, are to be restored and Swanbrook and its adjoining cottage are to be set within their own grounds.
The overall redevelopment plan, designed by Gerry Hand of artchitects Douglas Wallace, is based around the concept of a formal residential square on the model of the Regency/Victorian squares such as Onslow and Cadogan in London. The scheme will conform with the present mature landscape and, where appropriate, additional mature trees will be planted.
Around 15 Regency-style houses, 20 mews houses and 45 apartments aimed at the top end of the market are to be built on the site. The square will be faced on three sides with a four-storey terrace of Regency-style houses similar to those built by Nash at Regents Park. There are to be three private mews courtyards, two of them with a mixture of two and three-storey mews houses and apartments to be accessed off the corners off the square. A third courtyard will be reached off Bloomfield Avenue and will contain a mixure of mews houses and apartments. Car parking will be under the courtyard.
Most interest is likely to centre on the Regency-style houses which will have between 3,600 and 4,000sqft of living space on four floors. They are likely to cost around £2.5 million (3.17) each.
The entrances to the houses will be at first floor level via a half flight of granite steps. The principal dining and reception rooms at this level will be of a size and proportion similar to a piano nobile floor in a Regency style house. The mews houses and their courtyard will be designed in a more contemporary style and will cost from £1 million (1.27m) each. They will have two and three bedrooms and floor areas of 1,200 to 1,400 sq ft over two and three levels. All of them will have private courtyards or rear gardens.
Radical Properties has completed a number of high profile developments including the Jurys Inn in Limerick and the Edward Square shopping complex alongside the Eyre Square shopping centre in Galway. The company recently lodged a planning application for a £60m (76.18m) shopping and residential development in a rundown docklands area of Drogheda, which is likely to prove a major boost for the town. Mr Barrett also holds a major stake in Guild House, a large office block in Dublin's IFSC. The project manager for the Quakers was Bill Nowlan of William K Nowlan and Associates while the Bloomfield committee was advised by Edmund Douglas and Ben Pearson of Douglas Newman Good Commercial.
