The opening of the Dart station on April 19th is expected to generate more retail activity in the new town, writes JACK FAGAN
IRELAND’S NEWEST town at Clongriffin, on the north-eastern edge of Dublin city, will move up a gear when its newly developed Dart station opens for rail commuters on April 19th.
Businessman Gerry Gannon – whose €1bn-plus of property loans are due to end up in Nama – has completed development work on his side of the elaborate €22 million station and residents on the Baldoyle side of the facility will also be able to avail of the Dart service which is along the Dublin-Malahide line. Gannon paid 65 per cent of the station’s cost with developers Seán Mulryan and Séamus Ross paying the balance.
The opening of the station is expected to draw thousands of commuters through Clongriffin town centre, where Gannon Developments has built a 500-space park-and-ride facility under the town square as well as a 700-space multi-storey car park. The town will eventually cater for about 25,000 residents.
Two sides of the town’s open air square designed by Conroy Crowe Kelly Architects have already been completed and include a 2,900sq m (31,215sq ft) supermarket to be operated by Superquinn. Travelators will take shoppers to an overhead department store of 2,800sq m (30,129sq ft) which is to be offered to some of the top names in retailing by joint agents HT Meagher O’Reilly and Finnegan Menton.
The agents will also be marketing a range of other retail units at street level where a number of top traders are already open. These include Centra, Paddy Power, Franks Kitchen, Brownes Barber, Carry Out off licence and Clongriffin Pharmacy.
The units still available range in size from 68sq m to 1,393sq m (731sq ft to 15,000sq ft). A 67-bedroom hotel has also been completed in the new town centre and an office block of 1,800sq m (19,375sq ft) has been pre-let to the HSE.
The east side of Clongriffin town centre has a five-storey apartment block with 87 homes over ground floor shops which also form one edge of the civic steps leading to the new Dart station. The staggered steps lead to a pedestrian, cycle and bus-only bridge to Baldoyle village. The third side of the square has been earmarked for a 14-storey landmark office block.
The majority of the shops are on the ground floor of mainly five-storey apartment blocks running along the main route connecting Malahide Road to Station Square. Small local parks and squares at various places in the town add interest. The western edge is dominated by the 22-hectare Fr Collins Park, complete with towering wind turbines that provide some of the energy needs of the new town.
The park will have a children’s playground, a boating lake, running track and playing pitches.
Eventually, Clongriffin will have a variety of shopping, entertainment and social facilities to cater for about 5,500 homes on both sides of the Dart line. Séamus Ross’s Menolly Homes is developing the former Baldoyle Racecourse while Seán Mulryan’s Ballymore has retained a large part of the old racecourse for a development of large family homes.
Up to 700 acres of zoned land belonging to Gannon, mainly in north Dublin, are expected to be transferred to Nama, along with other properties. It is likely that some of Gannon’s borrowings were included in the first wave of loans transferred to Nama last week.
