Cork: Owners of derelict buildings 'holding regeneration of towns and villages to ransom'
Linehan The Due Picture: To Cork, Which Be Co Dan In Hotel Is Former Central Mallow, Demolished
The issue of dereliction in a North Cork town took a macabre twist in January when human remains were discovered in a boarded-up house.
Later identified as Tim O’Sullivan, his skeleton was found under a duvet in a bedroom of the single-story terraced house in Mallow. Two county council staff made the grim discovery after they forced entry into the Beecher Street property to deal with rodent infestation.
The property had been, and remains, boarded up after local youths started smashing the windows with stones. The Kerry native is understood to have died in 2001, which was the year a tub of butter had expired in his fridge.
It was a grim story in its own right, but the efforts by Cork County Council in the case were also an illustration of how hard it can be to find out not only who owns a property but also how to contact them, or their family.
Officials had, in this case, attached a notice to the door of the property asking if anybody knew who owned it. After this failed to work, they initiated a compulsory purchase order (CPO) process and had started taking steps in 2022 to serve statutory notices on the property under the Derelict Sites Act.
And the house on Beecher St is not the only derelict site in the town. A few hundred yards away sits the Central Hotel.
It is another example of a familiar sight in Irish towns, a once grand architectural edifice now boarded up and rotting in a central location.
Inside, rooms and corridors are strewn with debris and severely damaged by any one of the many fires that have hit the property over the years.
Staircases have collapsed, wooden floorboards creak sharply around cracks, and there are gaping holes to floors below and almost every internal window or mirror has been smashed.
Around the debris, sections of the building are supported by rusting scaffolding and large metal girders.
Home now to little more than the odd roosting pigeon, its innards do look as if a bomb has gone off.
The wreck featured in our dereliction series on Munster counties back in August 2021, and it is still a feature of the sort of blight stamping an ugly stain on the streetscape of any number of Irish towns or villages.
Things do however seem to be looking up since our focus on dereliction in the town in 2021.
It has a new owner, and they have big plans for the place.
“If it happens it will be amazing for Mallow,” said local councillor Pat Hayes.
“The owners are waiting on a report and when they get the result, that will really guide them on the direction they want to go. But they have plans for a hotel, apartments and a rooftop restaurant.
“It has been derelict for more than 15 years but finally, there is something in the pre-planning process.”
He added: “It has yet to work its way to the planning process and as everybody knows, planning processes are very slow.
“It just takes time.”
The hotel, where there have been at least three fires, was discussed in the Dáil earlier this year, when Mallow-based Labour TD Sean Sherlock raised it with Minister for Rural and Community Development Minister Heather Humphreys.
He wanted to know if councils could be given funding to buy up properties like the Central Hotel and bring them back to use.
Mr Sherlock had previously put forward a private member’s bill on dereliction. The Derelict Sites (Amendment) Bill 2021 passed the first stage unopposed but has yet to progress beyond the second stage of the process.
The point of the bill is to give local authorities a mechanism to recoup costs they incur while making derelict sites safe. It proposes to do this by ensuring any expenses incurred become a charge on the land and the authority would become a secured creditor in the event of any subsequent insolvency or liquidation.
This would, in turn, help ensure they get back the cost of any work they carried out.
Mr Sherlock said the bill still has some way to go before it reaches the next stage.
But in general terms, on the subject of dereliction, he said: “There's still a high degree of very visible buildings that are derelict.
“You feel that once they're dealt with, it will generate greater interest in looking at other buildings for renovation and regeneration.
“However, we still have too many people holding on to buildings who probably feel that their buildings are worth way above the value that the market would sustain.
“This is especially the case where there is an active interest by individuals to purchase these buildings and renovate them and make them liveable and workable again.”
The carcass of the Central Hotel may well epitomise the issue of main street dereliction for Mallow, but in Mitchelstown, that dubious honour surely falls to 49 Upper Cork St.
It literally looks as if the upper part of the building has been hit by a missile and it has looked that way since July 2021.
This was when a large chunk of the upper floor of the building collapsed onto the street. It led to an area in front of the address and properties on either side being blocked off by a wall of concrete blocks as a safety measure, should any more of the property collapse.
Metal hoarding has since been erected as another safety measure.
The collapse also led to the closure of the pedestrian Brothers Path shortcut that links this part of the town with two CBS schools and the town’s leisure centre.
The building even had its own aptly-named Crumbled Building Committee, set up by residents to represent concerns about the building.
Statutory notices were served under the Local Government (Sanitary Services) Act 1964 requiring the safe remediation of dangerous structures. But as those notices were not complied with within the time allowed, the county solicitor was instructed to institute legal proceedings for non-compliance with those notices.c
The Brothers Path did not reopen until September 2022 and the building itself is still derelict and the area around still boarded up. There has been little movement on the issue because matters are in the hands of various teams of lawyers representing various players in this long-running dereliction saga.
Mitchelstown-based Cork County Council councillor Kay Dawson said: “It is hard to know where things are now because of the legal issues.
“The council can’t say much because of these legal issues and, meanwhile, we have this appalling eyesore sitting at the entrance to Mitchelstown.
“People are very upset about it because it is a shocking sight.
“It is as unsightly now as it has been since the day it happened. It still has that gaping hole on the top floor.”
Over in Fermoy, they have their own issues with dereliction.
At the time the ran its piece in 2021, derelict or vacant properties of concern included The Session, or the 59 as it was known, the former Presentation Convent, and the old fire station.
According to local councillor Noel McCarthy work is progressing.
The former Presentation Convent buildings have been refurbished and now house Ukrainian refugees, and the old fire station’s sale was approved around six months ago.
Mr McCarthy said: “Things are starting to improve and you can see the changes.
“I notice the council have become far more active in engaging with owners and that’s great to see. But it is not easy taking on a derelict property.
“There will need to be a lot of work done at the old fire station before that comes online but Fermoy is getting there and things are moving.
“As with everything, things could move faster but moving slowly is better than not moving at all, and we are further down the road than where we were in 20221.”
According to provisional Central Statistics Office data collated after last year’s census, there are around 17,280 vacant dwellings around Cork County, down from the 19,937 in the 2016 census.
Meanwhile, the county’s population has increased. At the time of last year’s census, it stood at 581,231 up 38,363 or 7.1% on 2016 — when the increase had been 4.6% on the previous census in 2011.
Added to that, there were 7,280 unoccupied holiday homes in 2022, up only very slightly from the 7,272 identified in 2016.
With a housing stock in 2022 of 242,199, the county has a provisional vacancy rate of 7.1% — down from the 8.7% rate in 2016.
Of the vacant dwellings, 1,962 were up for sale and a further 3,087 were rentals.
According to the GeoDirectory Residential Buildings Report for the second quarter of 2023, there were 2,393 buildings under construction, with commencement notices having been submitted in relation to a further 2,988 buildings.
The same report also noted that an extra 2,959 addresses were added to the GeoDirecory database in the 12 months to June 2023.
According to GeoDirectory’s Commercial Buildings Report for the last quarter of 2022, Cork had a commercial vacancy of 12.4%, up marginally from 12.3% the year before. This was lower than the national commercial vacancy rate of 14% which was the highest vacancy rate recorded since the inception of this report series in 2013.
Mallow, however, had an above average commercial vacancy rate of 16.7% in the last quarter of 2022, up from 14.9% the year before.
While the CSO produces revisions of its census numbers, its vacancy figures are being double-checked by local authorities like Cork County Council as part of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage’s nationwide vacancies survey.
These surveys involve visiting properties in settlements which have been identified as vacant by the CSO and verifying if they are vacant or not.
The survey also records basic information about the “external visual condition” of the property and the reason for possible vacancy.
Once the survey is completed properties will be assessed as to how best they can be brought back into use.
The survey will have some way to go if last year’s provisional Central Statistics Office statistics for Co. Cork vacant dwellings are anything to go by.
The council says it has so far surveyed 1,250 vacant private properties as part of the vacancies survey.
On the dereliction front, the council says that — to date in 2023 — three Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) of derelict properties are at “an advanced stage”. They say there are a further four “progressing through the initial stage” of a CPO process.
They said other approaches to tackling vacancy and dereliction include what they describe as “direct, proactive engagement with owners to remedy dereliction” through its municipal districts.
To this end, the council says 100 “dereliction issues” have been resolved in this manner to date in 2023. In these cases, officials say each property was made “non-derelict” following engagement between the council and the property owners.
The council says 256 people have applied for Croí Conaithe Vacant Property Grants. These offer up to €70,000 for the refurbishment of vacant or derelict properties built before 2007.
Grants were initially capped at €30,00 but they went up in May this year to €50,000 with regards to vacant homes and up to €70,000 for derelict properties.