Land Development Agency plans 22-storey housing block in Dublin 8

The State's Land Development Agency (LDA) wants to build a 22-storey tower in Dublin 8 – the same height as the city's tallest building located in the docklands.

The proposed tower is part of the LDA's plans for 700 homes on the site of the 1950s Dublin City Council flat complex St Teresa's Gardens.

The site is beside the former Player Wills cigarette factory and Bailey Gibson packaging plant on the South Circular Road, where US property group Hines was last month granted permission for a controversial 19-storey building.

The LDA is redeveloping St Teresa’s Gardens on behalf of the council, which still owns the site, with 30 per cent of the homes to be retained for social housing, and 70 per cent used for a cost rental scheme aimed at low- and middle-income workers, where the rents are based on the cost of building and managing the apartments.

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Four buildings

The emerging design for the development, renamed the “Donore Project”, includes four buildings, ranging in height from two to 22 storeys to “ensure an efficient use of the council’s lands in this established residential neighbourhood in a highly sustainable location”, the LDA said. The 22-storey tower would have the same number of floors as the city’s current tallest building, Kennedy Wilson’s Capital Dock tower at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay.

The LDA has undertaken a consultation process with local residents’ associations, community groups and public representatives in recent months and said the feedback from this process “fed into the outline designs”. The designs are in line with a masterplan that was prepared by the council in conjunction with Hines, the LDA said.

A second round of consultations will run until July 2nd with the designs due to be finalised by October and a planning application expected to be lodged in early 2022.

Once one of the city’s largest council flat complexes, St Teresa’s Gardens was earmarked for regeneration in 2005, but the plan was scrapped in 2009 after the collapse of the property market.

Demolish

In 2013, the council announced plans to demolish 10 of the 12-flat blocks and refurbish two blocks to create 52 modern apartments, and to build 54 more houses and apartments.

Demolition began in February 2015. The refurbishment of the saved block was completed by the end of 2015. Construction of the new homes had been due to start in November 2015. However, hazardous waste was found in October 2016 and the project was put on hold until the soil was decontaminated. Construction of the houses eventually began in December 2018.

In 2017, the council produced a masterplan for St Teresa’s, along with the Player Wills and Bailey Gibson sites. The latter two were then owned by Nama. However, Hines subsequently bought them, and plans to build more than 1,500 homes in three phases.

The first phase of 416 homes with a 16-storey apartment block, on the Bailey Gibson site was granted permission by An Bord Pleanála last September. It is the subject of a judicial review by local residents, which is due for decision next month.