Council grants permission for 502 apartments in Poolbeg

Plans to redevelop the former Irish Glass Bottle site at Poolbeg in Dublin for further housing have received a major boost.

This follows Dublin City Council granting planning permission to a Johnny Ronan RGRE led consortium, Pembroke Beach DAC, to construct 502 apartments across five separate apartment blocks ranging in height from six to seven storeys for the former Irish Glass Bottle site at Sandymount Strand, Dublin 4.

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 DAC 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 €29.25m 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 council refusal to Pembroke Beach DAC for 516 apartments for the same site in May of last year.

The National Asset Management Agency sold its shareholding in the the Glass Bottle Consortium last year and the consortium today is made up of funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management, L.P., Lioncor and RGRE.

Lioncor as residential development manager are 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 Glass Bottle to 1,396 with initial completions set for the fourth quarter of 2025.

“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,” chief executive of Lioncor, John Maxwell said.

He added that Lioncor is 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 stated that the planning application has addressed the previous reasons for refusal.

In a statement, Lioncor stated: “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”.

Already, the Council has 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% 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.

– reporting Gordon Deegan