As Tom Gilmartin resumes his evidence to the Mahon tribunal, the background to the Quarryvale planning saga is outlined by Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
The Liffey Valley shopping centre at Quarryvale would never have been built but for the fact that a majority of Dublin county councillors voted in 1992 to rezone the 180-acre site for a retail-based development.
That decision, as we now know and we suspected at the time, was to become the most controversial in the council's history.
For the previous 20 years, successive Dublin county plans had zoned another site in Balgaddy as a "town centre" for the Lucan-Clondalkin agglomeration.
This site however was relatively isolated, with poor road access and an absence of development in the vicinity - despite its location on the Dublin-Cork railway line.
The Balgaddy site was in the hands of Cork-based property developer Owen O'Callaghan, who had almost given up on it when Tom Gilmartin started assembling Quarryvale in the late 1980s. The Sligo-born developer was the first to spot its strategic significance, at the fulcrum of the M50 motorway, then under construction.
Gilmartin, who was based in Luton, had been inspired by the success of the Thatcher-era Metro Centre on Tyneside, a vast out-of-town shopping mall near Gateshead, and saw an opportunity to develop something similar on the outskirts of Dublin "where the M50 meets the N4" - at a time when the Irish economy was down in the dumps.
What he was planning, it emerged, was Ireland's largest shopping centre, with some 1.5 million sq feet of selling space (139,350sq metres), backed up by nearly a million sq ft (92,900sq metres) of retail warehousing and parking for up to 10,000 cars. It was to be a national rather than merely regional shopping mecca.
However, in order to complete his acquisition of the Quarryvale site, Gilmartin had to get his hands on a 69-acre holding zoned for industrial development, which was owned by Dublin Corporation (as it then was). Evidence
assembled by the Mahon tribunal shows he had a number of meetings with politicians to advance his scheme.
Certainly, members of the then Fianna Fáil minority government - including taoiseach Charles Haughey, minister for the environment Pádraig Flynn and minister for labour Bertie Ahern - were aware of Gilmartin's plans for Quarryvale and for another major shopping mall on Bachelors Walk, in the city centre.
It was made clear to senior city and county officials at a meeting in Government Buildings in September 1988 that they were to facilitate these plans. Subsequently, Dublin Corporation agreed to dispose of its site at Quarryvale to Gilmartin for £5.1 million - even though his plans would have potentially damaging impacts on the city centre.
In June 1989, Gilmartin made a substantial donation to Fianna Fáil, giving a blank cheque for £50,000 to Flynn, who made it out to "cash" and lodged it in his bank account at the Bank of Ireland on College Green. Gilmartin's hopes though that Quarryvale would be designated for urban renewal tax incentives came to naught.
He also ran into financing problems. With £15 million racked up on its acquisition, AIB - which was bankrolling the venture - became nervous and encouraged O'Callaghan to get involved. Gilmartin was told that he had to make way for the Cork developer or the bank would put his company into liquidation.
As soon as O'Callaghan was in the driving seat, he set about the task of having Quarryvale rezoned, working closely with lobbyist Frank Dunlop and architect Ambrose Kelly; the plan was to sell the scheme as a much-needed amenity for the deprived communities of north Clondalkin, and this succeeded.
In May 1991, Dublin County Council voted by a large majority (29-13) to relocate the "town centre" zoning from Balgaddy to Quarryvale, even though the latter is located at the northeastern extremity of the "new town" it was meant to serve - a move described by council planners as "seriously detrimental" to 1972 county plan.
A huge political storm blew up and, in the local elections a month later, 12 of the most prominent rezoners - including the late Liam Lawlor - lost their seats. As a result, plans for Quarryvale had to be scaled down, with O'Callaghan proposing that the rezoning would be "capped" at 250,000 sq ft (23,225sq metres) of retail space.
Few believed that the "cap" on Quarryvale would hold or that the 40,000-seat soccer stadium for which O'Callaghan got planning permission to build in 1993 on the Balgaddy/ Neilstown site would ever host a match.
It subsequently emerged that more than 20 councillors had been paid money by Frank Dunlop. The money came from a bank account held by Dunlop at the AIB branch in Rathfarnham, from which there had been substantial withdrawals of cash, amounting to almost £250,000, which coincided with the county council's votes on Quarryvale in 1991 and 1992.
Dunlop's sensational revelations in 2000 showed sums of money were paid to councillors, ranging from £500 at the lower end of the scale to £48,500 in the case of Lawlor.
O'Callaghan said he would be telling the tribunal that he "never instructed or authorised anyone" to pay money on his behalf to any politician for his or her vote.
However, even before the Liffey Valley shopping centre (in which the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Holdings had taken a 50 per cent stake) opened in October 1998, South Dublin County Council had already decided to lift the zoning cap on its retail content, allowing the developers to double its size.
In March 2000, however, An Bord Pleanála upheld appeals by Rgdata, which represents smaller retail outlets, and the Irish Hardware Association, by refusing permission for the proposed development on the grounds it would create serious traffic congestion on the M50 and undermine established shops.
The county council was undeterred. Its planners took the view that, since Liffey Valley was up and running, "town centre" zoning should be conferred on it and the originally designated Balgaddy site should be downgraded to "district centre" status - much to the annoyance of Treasury Holdings, which had bought it.
Thus, when Treasury sought planning permission to develop this 15-acre site in recent years, it was flatly turned down twice. Every planning reason under the sun was given for these refusals, but the underlying rationale was that the planners - supported by a majority of South Dublin councillors - favour developing Liffey Valley instead.
In 2001, retail planning guidelines for the Greater Dublin Area were changed to permit its unlimited expansion. And though councillors voted in 2002 to defer giving it "town centre" status until the Mahon tribunal reported on the murky business of how it was rezoned, this decision was reversed in 2004 on the planners' recommendation.
The only consolation for the original "town centre" is that it has been included in a Strategic Development Zone of over 400 acres in Balgaddy and Clonburris. This decision was made last August by Minister for the Environment Dick Roche, because developing this long-neglected area is now seen to be of "economic or social importance".
Frank McDonald
© 2007 The Irish Times
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