Retail and leisure centre for baths site

A proposal to replace the old baths in Blackrock, Co Dublin, with a shopping mall and a leisure amenity is under discussion between Treasury Holdings and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.

The former baths beside the Blackrock DART station was once a bustling south Dublin amenity, but has been closed for a number of years. It is now in a poor state of repair and is the focus of complaints about cider parties and anti-social behaviour.

The Treasury Holdings proposal envisages a new shopping facility encompassing the DART station and rising to the level of Blackrock Main Street, to which it would connect by walkways and shopping arcades. The plan, if successful, would give a "walk through" of shopping facilities from the Frascati Centre, across to the Blackrock Centre and on to the new centre. Treasury is understood to be willing to replace the old baths with a new leisure amenity which may include a swimming-pool. The baths are currently zoned for amenity use in the development plan but this could be overcome if councillors voted in favour of a material contravention. For this to happen, however, there would have to be a large emphasis on the public benefit from such a proposal. The Fianna Fail leader on the council, Mrs Betty Coffey, has already dubbed an earlier redevelopment proposal comprising 54 apartments and a restaurant with retail and leisure facilities as "too damned greedy". That proposal came from a council "ideas" competition in January, 1999.

Further opposition is likely to come from the residents of Idrone Terrace whose views may be impaired by a development rising above the DART station. However the county council is anxious that something be developed on the site of the baths. A model for any proposed development may well be the old Pavilion cinema site on Marine Road, Dun Laoghaire, which has been redeveloped by Eddie Sweeney's Pavilion Leisure as an upmarket apartment development which includes a theatre.

The Blackrock baths are owned by the Pembroke Estate but held by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council under a 150-year lease. A spokesman for un Laoghaire Rathdown County Council the council confirmed that "a number of options are being considered in relation to Blackrock baths, including broad ideas put forward by Richard Barrett and John Ronan of Treasury Holdings".