Apartment dwellers hit out over Ronan’s 17-storey scheme for Citigroup’s office

Johnny Ronan’s planned 17-storey mixed-use scheme for Dublin’s Docklands “will have a brutal and disproportionate impact on the local residential environment”.

That is according to an objection by a management company acting on behalf of 186 apartment owners at Clarion Quay, in Dublin 1.

Mr Ronan’s Ronan Real Estate Group’s (RGRE) planning application is part of a redevelopment of global banking giant Citigroup’s current European headquarters at 1 North Wall Quay, in Dublin’s Docklands.

The scheme involves the demolition of Citigroup’s existing six-storey office building and the development of four buildings in its place, ranging in heights of nine storeys to 17 storeys.

The RGRE firm, NWQ Devco Limited, is seeking a 10-year planning permission, and in a planning report lodged with the application, planning consultant John Spain says the new development “proposes to positively transform this waterfront location of the established city block with an exemplar design which is informed and responds to its riverfront context”.

Mr Spain says that “the design seeks to provide a significant gain to the urban area in terms of design quality, streetscape vibrancy and activation, social and cultural interests and the creation of best-in-class contemporary workplace”.

However, in the apartment owners’ objection, planning consultant John Bird argues that a grant of permission would have a chilling effect on the future provision of much-needed housing in the city.

On behalf of the Clarion Quay Management Company, Mr Bird says: “A precedent would be set so that no resident of the city would feel that their residential amenity would be respected and that no protection would be given to transitional areas.”

He said that his clients are concerned the proposal, with its overlooking and overshadowing arising, “would seriously affect the residential amenity and the enjoyment of the residences and shared spaces”.

He says that visual impacts from all over the city “would be immense and public amenity spaces would all be compromised for private gain”.

As part of the same submission, the secretary of the Clarion Quay Management Company, David Ward, has told the council: “We have to say we are shocked by the proposal in its size, scale, but really in the way it has not considered the presence of Clarion Quay and the 300400 residents.”