Griffith College Cork facing calls to remove pitch from landscape preservation zone
Griffith Former Party And Now College Its Pitch Green The Said To Cllr Remove Land Moran Cork should Oliver State The Restore
Griffith College Cork is facing calls to restore an area of urban forest it cleared from a landscape preservation zone after it was refused planning retention for an astroturf pitch built there without permission.
A key biodiversity report that informed Cork City Council’s decision to refuse to grant planning retention to Griffith College Cork for the pitch, said the pitch and the previous habitat of urban forest, which it cleared from part of its Cork city campus in 2018, “could have existed beside one another” and provided habitats for the students to explore and for recreational use.
Green Party Cllr Oliver Moran said the college, which is Ireland’s largest independent third-level institution, should now remove the pitch and restore the land to its former state.
“That would be in keeping with both the letter of, and the spirit of the zoning of this area,” he said.
The college is entitled to appeal the decision to An Bórd Pleanála but said it will not be making statements "on ongoing planning matters".
The college, established in 1974, acquired the former Marymount Hospice’s five-acre campus on Wellington Road in 2013.
The site, which includes several 1800s buildings, some of which are protected structures, and a 1909-built chapel donated by the Honan family, overlooks the city.
Part of the site is a designated landscape preservation zone for tree canopy and ecology which means there is a presumption against development in the area.
But in the summer of 2018, the college sparked anger when it cleared an area of urban forest behind its buildings.
In April 2019, it defended the move insisting that it had “cleaned up an area of land” by “removing up to a decade of overgrowth and up to six small trees”, and that it had consulted closely with local residents.
“The college was also responding to concerns from local residents of anti-social behaviour, waste dumping, and the overgrown nature of the area. This was deemed to be a health and safety concern. The college plans to grass this area and use it as a recreation space for its students, pupils, and staff,” it said at the time.
The following year, the college made an unsuccessful submission during the drafting of the new city development plan, seeking the removal of the landscape protection zoning to facilitate its expansion plans.
But when it subsequently developed the pitch on part of the cleared site, Mr Moran lodged a planning enforcement complaint.
The council issued a warning letter to Griffith College Cork last June, which led to the lodging last December of a planning application from Patluke Ltd, trading as Griffith College Cork, seeking retention permission for the pitch.
It argued that the landscape preservation zoning was allocated to this part of the city on the basis of “previous tree canopy” that existed at this location.
“These trees no longer exist on the site and were felled for, inter alia, health and safety reasons some years ago. The playing surface is also located in an area that was previously occupied by polytunnels and associated gardening activities as opposed to any substantive area of tree cover," it argued.
“The previous use of this part of the site for gardening represents a form recreation on private open space, with the subject artificial playing area a variant of this, which again is thematically linked to the wider education use of the site.”
It said the artificial grass pitch “was put in place in good faith” to create an “important new outdoor recreational space” for its students.
But in assessing the application, the council’s biodiversity officer said planning applications within areas or on sites benefitting from such landscape protection must demonstrate that there is no resulting adverse impact on the landscape assets and character of the area, by means of a design statement that includes a landscape assessment and visual impact assessment the impact.
No such assessments have been provided with this planning application, her report said.
In refusing planning, the council said the pitch is contrary to the land use zoning objective of the site, the proposed retention of the artificial grass pitch by way of its impact on biodiversity and ecology contravenes key objectives in the city development plan, and the placement of the pitch and perimeter fencing relative to nearby protected structures within an architectural conservation area (ACA) has a negative impact on the setting of the protected structure and is considered to materially affect the character of both the protected structure and the ACA.
The college has invested heavily to refurbish and upgrade its historic buildings for educational uses.
In 2020, it spent over €2m restoring the former convent building and transforming the nuns’ former living quarters into 20 lecture rooms while retaining all the original architectural detail of the 1800 building.