Plans for more housing at the former Irish Glass Bottle site at Poolbeg in Dublin have received a boost. Dublin City Council has granted planning permission to a Johnny Ronan RGRE-led consortium, Pembroke Beach, to construct 502 apartments across five separate apartment blocks ranging in height from six to seven storeys at the site
The developers are to provide 50 units for social housing in order to comply with their Part V social housing obligations. A letter lodged with the application on behalf of Pembroke Beach puts an indicative cost of €675,000 on the two-bedroom apartment and €495,000 on the one-bed units, resulting in an overall indicative cost of €29.25 million for the 50 units.
The firm proposes to sell 25 one-bed and 25 two-bed apartments, and negotiations can now commence with Dublin City Council on a final price.
The grant of planning permission reverses a previous council refusal of planning permission for 516 apartments in May of last year.
The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) had a 20 per cent shareholding in the project but sold it last year. The consortium today is made up of funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management, L.P, Lioncor and RGRE.
Lioncor, as residential development manager, is currently on site delivering 894 units in two phases.
The new approval brings the overall number of residential homes that have been granted permission at the site to 1,396, with initial completions set for the final quarter of 2025.
Chief executive of Lioncor, John Maxwell said on Wednesday: “The success of this planning application at Glass Bottle has been the result of the successful collaboration between ourselves, our design team and Dublin City Council.” He said Lioncor was looking forward “to activating this new phase by year-end”.
The new scheme is to also include 117 build-to-rent units. Planning consultants for the scheme, Tom Phillips + Associates said that the planning application has addressed the previous reasons for refusal.
In a statement, Lioncor said “the development of Glass Bottle will see the transformation of 37.2 acres of industrial land into an integrated and vibrant new place for all Dubliners. The ambition and vision for the site is to create a new balanced community made up of private, social, affordable and rented homes.”
The council had granted a parent permission for the Irish Glass Bottle site redevelopment in January 2020 permitting streets, transportation, water services, utilities infrastructure and public realm and public amenity spaces.
In December 2020, Nama confirmed that Johnny Ronan and Oaktree signed up to purchase 80 per cent of the former Irish Glass Bottle site and adjoining plot.
It was reported at the time that the winning bid for the controlling interest came to a higher-than-expected €200 million.
