Developers face delay after council decision

It could be a year before property developer Sean Dunne gets another chance to put his plans for high-rise, mixed-use development before Dublin City Council, city management say.

Councillors last night rejected the entire Ballsbridge local area plan because they said it was predicated on the creation of high-rise buildings of up to 20 storeys.

Mr Dunne's Mountbrook Homes was among a number of property development companies which lobbied for the zoning changes to be made as part of the Ballsbridge local area plan. He paid €379 million for the Jurys, Jurys Tower and Berkeley Court hotels in Ballsbridge.

Another developer, Ray Grehan of Glenkerrin Homes, paid €171.5m for the adjacent veterinary college site. Other developers with local holdings include Bernard McNamara, David Courtney and Gerry O'Reilly.

After pre-planning discussions with the developers, the council decided to recommend the inclusion of mixed-use local centre buildings with a height of up to 12 storeys and district centre buildings with a height of up to 20 storeys. Retail elements would have been restricted to 10,000 sq m.

Assistant city manager Michael Stubbs set out the proposals in a letter to councillors last week and formally proposed them in the local area plan debated yesterday.

But speaking at a meeting of the area councillors in advance of the full council meeting last night, Mary Freehill (Lab) criticised Mr Stubbs for even bringing the plan to the members for adoption. "It is hard for us not to believe you are being driven by more powerful forces outside this city council. That is how it looks to us," she said.

"I am talking about [ how] we can't get local area plans done and all of a sudden a developer buys land and it is done like that."

The chairman of the committee Dermot Lacey (Lab) said he agreed with other members, particularly Wendy Hederman (PDs), that the local area plan was incapable of being amended to reflect the council's vision for the area. A decision should not be deferred, he said. The whole plan should be rejected and the process begun again.

The local area plan was "so predicated" on the principle of high-rise development as to be "unamendable", he said. However, Mr Lacey told members he believed higher zonings in Ballsbridge were inevitable. But he said he wanted to see a plan that was people-centred and "not just about the enhancement of the rights of the developer".

Ms Hederman also said she believed the local area plan "seemed to be predicated on the rezonings of a number of sites which have changed hands in recent years".

Daithi Doolan (SF) said the plan represented "a developers' charter" and to defer it rather than to reject it would "be to give it oxygen it doesn't deserve".

Mr Stubbs said it was wrong to say the process was initiated by property developers when the members knew making the local area plan had been initiated by the members themselves.

Mr Stubbs saidwhile some elements of research could be used again if a new local area plan was to be proposed, his next priority was a plan for Phibsboro and then Rathmines. It might be a year before the councillors considered Ballsbridge high-rises again.