Council says no to Ronan’s 17-storey dockland scheme
Dublin City Council has comprehensively rejected Johnny Ronan’s planned 17-storey mixed-use scheme for Dublin’s docklands.
In February, Mr Ronan’s Ronan Group Real Estate (RGRE) lodged plans for the redevelopment of global banking giant Citigroup’s European headquarters at 1 North Wall Quay.
The scheme involves the demolition of Citigroup’s sixstorey office building and the development of four buildings in its place, ranging in height from nine to 17 storeys.
RGRE firm NWQ Devco Limited is seeking a 10-year planning permission but the city council has refused permission on several grounds.
A spokesman for RGRE said yesterday that the group is to appeal the refusal to An Bord Pleanála.
He said: ‘RGRE is disappointed with the decision of Dublin City Council.’
He added that there is a strong view in the Irish planning and construction communities, and among the wider public, that there has been a missed opportunity over the past decade for increased heights and densities along Dublin’s north and south docklands, where the Liffey is at its widest and good transport infrastructure is in place.
The spokesman said: ‘With the pipeline of brownfield sites in the docklands now almost exhausted, few opportunities remain for the construction of taller, more sustainable buildings in a location that is clearly appropriate.’
The council ruled that the proposed development, due to its height and excessive bulk and scale, ‘would constitute an insensitive form of development adjacent to existing residential development’.
The planning authority stated that the proposal would result ‘in a significant and unacceptable loss of daylight/sunlight and resultant overshadowing to these properties and amenity areas, adversely impacting their residential amenity’.
It said the development ‘would therefore set an undesirable precedent and would devalue properties in the vicinity’.
The council also ruled that the proposed development ‘would constitute an overly dominant form causing serious injury to the visual amenities’ of the Liffey Quays – a conservation area.
The council said the proposed development contravened various policies of the Dublin City Development Plan, adversely affecting vistas along the river corridor and the amenities of properties in the vicinity. In the third reason for refusal, the council stated that having regard to the condition of the existing building, the proposed whole-scale demolition would be considered premature. It said that the planned demolition would be contrary to the Dublin City Development Plan, which seeks to promote and support the retrofitting and reuse of existing buildings rather than their demolition and reconstruction. The council stated that the proposed development ‘would set an undesirable precedent for whole-scale demolition on similar sites across the city’.
‘Unacceptable loss of daylight’