A new town centre to be developed in Dundrum, Dublin 14, will incorporate a large shopping centre, an office park, a 150-bedroom hotel, a multiplex cinema with 16 screens, a range of leisure and social facilities and a multi-storey car-park for 3,000 cars.
A planning application for the £190 million development was lodged yesterday by Castlethorn Construction, which bought the 21-acre site about 18 months ago.
The centre will be located on the former Pye lands between the existing Ballinteer Road and the Dundrum bypass, which will eventually link up with the Southern Cross Motorway.
The main access to the centre will be strategically located beside a new roundabout on the southern end of the site, which is due to join up with the Southern Cross in 2001. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has upgraded the site from that of a district centre to a town centre with the intention of creating the second largest town in its area.
The zoning paves the way for a comprehensive development of one of the best remaining sites in south Dublin.
The planning application provides for a 350,000 sq ft shopping centre, roughly the same size as the Jervis Centre in the city. Crazy Prices already has a 40,000 sq ft supermarket on the site and when the new complex is completed, Tesco will occupy a 45,000 sq ft anchor store. The shopping centre will be mainly two-storey but because of a 20-metre slope from one end of the site to the other, Tesco's store will be located on a third level with direct access to the car-park. Marks & Spencer is in negotiation to acquire a 50,000 sq ft anchor store to fulfil a long-standing ambition for a major outlet in one of south Dublin's affluent suburbs. Marks & Spencer may also open another store at Stillorgan Shopping Centre if An Bord Pleanala clears the way for its redevelopment. Dundrum's new town centre will have two further anchor units of around 25,000 sq ft each, one of them to be used as a department store. There will also be around 100 unit shops on two levels, which are expected to be in strong demand, given Dundrum's proximity to a heavily populated middle-class area.
While the shopping centre will be crucial to the scheme, it will represent only 40 per cent of the entire development, which will take about two years to complete. The overall plan for the scheme provides for direct pedestrian links from the existing village to a new civic square, which has been designed "to capture the atmosphere and ambience of European city squares". The square will be the centrepiece of the development and will be surrounded by the shopping centre (complete with external lifts), a five-storey hotel, restaurants, cinemas and 25 apartments. A tourist office will promote Dundrum as the gateway to the Dublin mountains.
The new civic area will also include a mill pond based on the Slang river, which runs through part of the site. It will be close to the Luas terminal.
There will be several interlinking car-parks with 90 per cent of the spaces located either below ground or at roof level. The design by architects Burke Kennedy Doyle ensures that there are no blank walls facing on to any of the roads. This has been achieved by adding own-door offices on one side of the shopping centre and a mixture of glazing and special elevational treatment on to the side facing the Dundrum by-pass. Pat Lafferty of Lafferty Design and Development has been appointed project manager. Castlethorn is to develop 150,000 sq ft of offices in three blocks, which will be ideal as headquarters buildings or for financial institutions. The office park is expected to provide about 1,000 jobs.
Dundrum village already has a thriving shopping centre owned by a pension fund.
