Green light for residential towers in Cork’s docklands
Friday, January 11, 2019
By Eoin English
Irish Examiner Reporter
Planners have given the green light for two residential towers in Cork’s docklands - a decision which brings the value of approved private sector projects in the docklands close to €500m.
Target Ark Ltd’s plan to build two slender apartment towers - one 10-storeys tall and the other a six-storey structure - on a strategic site off Victoria Road, behind the under-construction Navigation Square office precinct, is set to add renewed impetus to the expansion and rejuvenation of the city’s docklands eastwards.
It the latest large-scale docklands project sanctioned by planners. Others have been appealed to An Bord Pleanála.
The towers, designed by James Bourke Architects to reflect the area’s industrial heritage, will have 19 apartments - six one-bed, 10 two-bed and three three-bed apartments, and the towers will be linked by pedestrian walkways.
The scheme will include the renovation and redevelopment of an historic and listed 19th century warehouse next to Goldberg’s Bar and fronting Victoria Road, as a restaurant.
And the developers also plan to create a new pedestrian walkway from Victoria Road into the Navigation Square campus, which is being developed by O’Callaghan Properties the first phase of which, it is hoped, will open next month.
Pending a possible appeal on Cork City Council’s decision, it is hoped that work could start on site before the end of the year and take up to two years to complete.
The decision came as the developers behind The Prism, which has been appealed by An Taisce to An Bord Pleanála, defended the project.
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The council approved the 15-storey, €20m triangular-shaped office tower last year for a small site near the city's bus station.
Proposed by Tower Holdings, and inspired by the iconic 22-storey 1902 Flatiron building in New York, The Prism will deliver 60,000 sq ft of office space.
Reddy Architects said An Taisce concerns about its height are simplistic and do not address the positive urban design merits of the project.
This proposal is a deliberate attempt to fill an urban void in the centre of the east end of the city island with a tall, elegant, light-filled and transparent iconic piece of architecture that will signal the location of the burgeoning Cork city office district and to transition from the low lying city centre to the docklands," it said.
Meanwhile, construction on O’Callaghan Properties’s Navigation Square project on Albert Quay in the south docks is nearing completion. Its four signature buildings will provide 360,000 sq ft of fourth generation office space.
JCD has started site clearance and preparation work on its €125m Penrose Dock scheme on a 1.8-acre riverside site on the city’s northern docks at Penrose Quay, close to Kent train station. Two large office blocks, with some 250,000 sq ft of office space, will be built to accommodate over 2,200 employees. The historic 12,000 sq ft Penrose House will be retained.
BAM and Clarendon Properties are developing their €160m mixed-use HQ scheme on a site immediately downstream at Horgan’s Quay, in conjunction with landowners CIE. The HQ scheme includes 237 apartments for the letting market, a hotel, and 390,000 sq ft of offices.
The project is likely to take four years to complete.
The decision to grant planning to Dublin company Tetrarch Capital for a 162-bed seven-storey budget hotel at 7-9 Parnell Place, previously occupied by Flor Griffin and Mahers, has been appealed to An Bord Pleanála.