New Homes: We're finally seeing good signs for housing development
To Cork, Homes 1,000 Signs Already Ballinglanna, Being Has Positive Close Scheme Developed Homes: For Which Co O’flynn New An
Glaciers are melting faster than housing delivery in cases: despite deals, deadlines and development zoning, it can take years, decades, even, to get a scheme to market.
Case in point was the launch of Bayly in Cork’s Castletreasure, being done by publicly listed company Cairn who’ve delivered some 8,000 new Irish homes since 2015: it’s Cairn’s first Cork venture, having bought the land — some 50+ acres, and sloping, tricky and costly to deliver homes across — ten years ago as part of an Ulster Bank portfolio offload.
The Bayly site was initially bought/assembled by now-departed Cork company Frinailla in the mid-2000s and who’d planned to relocate Douglas GAA to here, further out of the village.
That ambitious game plan was conceived pre-crash and only finally now has blocks on the ground, through painful and protracted national recovery with, now, 20 years on, homes there up and occupied.
There’s an even longer route to market, though, on the other side of Cork and the River Lee.
Tunnel vision?
It’s at Dunkettle, or Dunkathel House, where a planning application is now expected to be lodged in coming months, for as many as 800 homes, in a development with a capital value well north of €300 million.
The period, Palladian-style home is prominent on the south-facing flanking hill just east of Glanmire and above the Lee Tunnel. It was acquired way back in 2003 by developers O’Flynn Construction on 158 acres, or which half or c.85 acres is zoned residential.
Dunkathel House was bought from private owners, the Russells who had previously considered a hotel centred on their grand, but a bit down-at-heel family home, for c.€24 million.
The plan, broadly, was to see the acquisition hold a residential-based scheme on a size par with O’Flynns’ c 850 unit Mount Oval at Rochestown, which started on 110 acres around 1997 and by then well-advanced, aiming for completion by 2008 (in the event, the post-crash slump saw the last few final small sections only wrap up a decade later, c.2018).
Apart from housing of scale at Dunkathel, there were mixed-use plans ()visitor centre, riding centre, garden centre) for the main nine-bay classical house, a protected structure, and its venerable courtyard.
Best laid plans and all of that.
An Bord Pleanala twice rejected development plans which had been approved by Cork County Council, citing inadequate road network.
Thus, Dunkathel’s development was long-fingered until the most recent upgrades at the Dunkettle Roundabout and interchange, a vital bit of regional transport infrastructure done at a cost of over of over €200m with, as of the moment, mixed results for motorists and users for the scale of spend.
In the interim, Glanmire has mushroomed with a number of subsequent developments either sides of its scenic valley setting: between just two of the larger ones alone, very close to and just north of Dunkathel called Woodville and Ballinglanna (another O’Flynn scheme which got an easier planning ride) close to 1,000 homes have come already to this setting.
O’Flynns are likely to go for c 800 homes over a proposed six to seven-year span at Dunkathel, similar in scale to 850 homes Mount Oval, which indeed took far longer to finally wrap up (1998 to 2018, approx.), and that faster-envisioned span is based on the pace of sales at OFG’s Ballinglanna, Glanmire development of c 600 homes.
Interviewed by the Irish Examiner two years ago, the high-profile developer Michael O’Flynn had reckoned they could be on-site at Dunkathel by 2024/2025. In the event, planning hasn’t yet been sought, so the clock ticks on.
And on.
By the time planning is even lodged, there’s likely to be the new, long-heralded planning appeals body, An Coimisiún Pleanála replacing An Bord Pleanala – such is change.
And, in further changes, the application will be to Cork City Council, not Cork County Council after the city boundary extension in 2019, as the boundary is the M8 running north up from the tunnel.
The timeline from application to decision to grant, or not, maybe a year, or more: it’s hoped to the new appeals body will bring the appeals process down to 18 weeks, but will be allowed up to 48 weeks still in more complex cases.
If a positive grant comes, it could be 2026 before a foundation is poured?
Then, even if it all finishes out in the most rapid speed hoped for, the aspirational seven years or so hope from by Mr O’Flynn, that takes ongoing delivery at Dunkathel out to 2033 or beyond.
That’s 30 years (or more!) after the site was bought in 2003: even assuming a fair planning and construction schedule, it means many of the buyers in its latter stage won’t even have been born when Dunkathel was first, eh, conceived.
Moral of this fable? Don’t count your chickens, or your large-scale, politically promised grand housing plans either for that matter, before they are even remotely oven-ready.