New developer plan for golf club lands

A FRESH application has been made for a huge €2 billion mixed-use development which was previously stalled by economic downturn

A developer has made an application to extend planning permission for 600 homes plus extensive retail space at the former Bray Golf Club lands.

Shankill Property Investments Ltd made the application to Wicklow County Council on July 15 and a decision is due by September 8. They are seeking a five-year extension to the permission.

Previous owners of the site, Pizarro Developments Ltd, applied for planning permission on October 26, 2007.

The proposed mixed use development comprised the demolition of numbers one to four Ravenswell Road, a building at Ravenswell school, the golf course clubhouse and some other ancillary buildings, as well as the construction of 603 residential units, 57,967 square metres of gross retail floor area, 5,797 square metres of offices, and eight screen cinema, a 103 bedroom hotel, a doctors surgery, dentist surgery, and two crèches.

The development as originally proposed also involved new vehicular access to the Sunnybank junction and a new internal road to service the proposed new road network for the adjoining Industrial Yarns site to the north.

Permission was granted on July 16 2008. That was subject to a third party appeal and An Bord Pleanala upheld the permission.

It was the residents’ group ‘SWAP’ (Safety With Alternative Plan) which opposed the development, based mainly on concerns about what they say is a low-lying floodplain along the Dargle River. They propose that it be retained as a linear park and playing fields.

In its recent letter to the council, the new developer said that construction shall begin in 2021 and be substantially completed by 2025.

Roadworks are now largely complete, they wrote also, as well as two schools on the site.

Wicklow County Council was informed last month that Shankill Property Investments was still in the process of acquiring the site in mid-July, and could not start construction until the purchase was complete.