Sunday 27 April 2008

Durkan Group denied planning permission

The Durkan Group has been refused planning permission to redevelop a site on Harcourt Terrace in central Dublin, which it acquired from the state in return for nearly 200 affordable housing units in west Dublin.

The developer had sought permission to demolish the existing Garda station, film censor’s office and other buildings and to build a mixed-use residential and office development of more than 18,000 square metres, including car parking.

It would have included 43 apartments and just under 14,000 square metres of office space.

However, An Bord Pleanála decided that two of the apartment buildings ‘‘would fail to respect [their] context’’ opposite Regency period buildings and adjoining Victorian houses.

The board said the blocks ‘‘would adversely impact on the setting of the protected structures opposite and would not be of the standard required to justify the removal of the existing Garda station building on the site’’.

Therefore they would ‘‘seriously injure the visual and residential amenity of the area and. . .be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area’’.

The main office block proposed ‘‘would be visually obtrusive’’, the board said, and ‘‘overbearing’’.

It also said that the rear office block proposed would ‘‘seriously injure the residential amenities of adjoining property in this residential conservation area’’.

Sunday Business Post

www.buckplanning.ie

No comments: