Ballymore gets green light to develop part of Guinness brewery in Dublin for housing, hotels and offices

Property developer Ballymore has been granted planning permission to redevelop part of the Guinness brewery site in Dublin 8 for residential housing and a range of other uses.

Dublin City Council has given the green light to Marbelsand Holding Ltd for the scheme at St James’s Gate, which includes 336 build-to-rent housing units in blocks rising up to 16 storeys in height. It also includes two hotels (with 304 bedrooms between them, and one of them to have a swimming pool and rooftop bar), a 280-capacity performance space, a food hall and marketplace, offices and a number of public spaces and new squares.

Called the Guinness Quarter, the plan involves the development of a 12.5-acre site that currently forms part of Diageo’s St James’s Gate brewing campus in Dublin 8.

The site would previously have housed some of Diageo’s brewing operations for Guinness and other beer brands but these were consolidated on another part of the campus some years ago to free up this land for development. Ballymore, which is led by its co-founder Sean Mulryan, was chosen by Diageo in 2020 as the developer of the site and has spent the intervening period developing its master plan for the area.

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In a statement, Ballymore said: “We note the decision of Dublin City Council relating to Ballymore’s high-quality, mixed-use residential, cultural, commercial and community neighbourhood at St James’s Gate. This is an important milestone in the process, and we are now reviewing the council’s decision and the conditions attached.”

The permission comes with a number of conditions. The council has decided that the build-to-rent units must not be used for short-term lettings, thereby ruling out their use by platforms such as Airbnb. It said this was in the “interests of orderly development and clarity”.

The council has also decided that Ballymore must pay a development contribution of €10.6 million to the local authority “in respect of public infrastructure and facilities benefiting [the] development”. This must be paid when the development commences.

It also wants details of a legal agreement that confirms that the build-to-rent units will be operated by an “institutional entity for a minimum period of not less than 15 years and where no individual residential units shall be sold separately for that period”.

In addition, before the expiry of this 15-year period, the owner must submit details and management structures proposed for the continued operation of the units as a build-to-rent scheme. “Any proposed amendment or deviation from the build-to-rent model as authorised in this permission shall be subject to a separate planning application,” it states.