Charlemont St regeneration scheme ready to proceed

Dublin city councillors will be briefed on a deal to provide social housing and a community centre at Charlemont Street in Dublin, on Monday.

The deal is part of the council’s overall plans for the regeneration of the five acre Charlemont Street flats complex, which date back to 2007.

The aim is to create a “high quality mixed use and mixed tenure neighbourhood” which the city council wants to integrate “into the social, economic and physical fabric of the city”.

Under the terms of the deal the McGarrell Reilly Group through its company Alcove Ireland Five Ltd, would develop and hand over 79 apartments and a fitted out community centre as well as paying the council €4.886 million.

The council would also be given the option to buy an additional 15 apartments at a 10 percent discount on the market price and a further 58 units at full market price.

According to the council the money aspect of the deal is necessary to pay Vat on the homes it acquires, which falls due to the revenue commissioners.

For the council’s part it will allow Alcove Ireland Five Ltd, to acquire the freehold to remaining land to develop housing which it would sell to the private market.

Three commercial units, which are part of the development would be leased to Alcove for 500 years

A Dublin City Council complex of more than 200 flats, which included a unique block designed by Busaras and Abbey Theatre architect Michael Scott, Ffrench Mullen House, was demolished last year to make way for the development.

The new complex is expected to include more than 250 new apartments.

Alcove Properties was granted planning permission for the redevelopment of the site between Charlemont Street and Richmond Street South in May 2011.

It had applied to build five blocks for retail and residential use, ranging up to eight storeys, but An Bord Pleanála directed the maximum height of any block would be six storeys.

The board also reduced the number of apartments permissible to 253 and ordered the alteration of five two-bedroom apartments to larger one-bed units.

Ffrench Mullen House was named after Madeline Ffrench Mullen who developed the nearby St Ultan’s Hospital for Women and Infants in 1919 in response to the dire economic conditions of the time.

The council’s south east area committee will be asked by council staff to approve the deal at its special meeting on Monday.