Urban Development  An Bord Pleanála's ruling in the long-running Quarryvale v Balgaddy saga has thrown the cat among the pigeons, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.

The Duke of Westminster was bound to be miffed this week at the news that An Bord Pleanála has come down in favour of developing the major town centre for Lucan-Clondalkin at the site in Balgaddy, designated for such a scheme as long ago as 1972.

The Duke, reputedly the fourth richest man in Britain, holds a 50 per cent interest in the Liffey Valley shopping centre at Quarryvale, through Grosvenor Holdings - and seemed set on course with his partner, Owen O'Callaghan, to develop it as the future "town centre".

Barkhill Ltd, the Grosvenor-O'Callaghan consortium, had the unqualified support of South Dublin County Council's planners.

Their view was that it made more sense to turn Quarryvale into a proper centre because it already exists rather than implement the original plan.

How Quarryvale came to be developed at all, of course, is one of the central issues being investigated by the Mahon (formerly Flood) Tribunal - in particular, lobbyist Frank Dunlop's claim that £112,000 was paid to councillors at the time of its rezoning in 1991-1992.

Liffey Valley was the product of the most corrupt decision in Dublin's planning history, but it came to be seen by the planners as a fait accompli, something that could be turned into a town centre even though it is located on the edge of the "town" it would supposedly serve.

Those who had an interest in the designated town centre site at Balgaddy, notably Treasury Holdings, were determined to put it up to the planning authorities to stand by the original plan and used every argument in the book to advance their case - with little success, until now.

South Dublin County Council, committed as its executive was to promoting Liffey Valley as an alternative, also used every argument in the book to dismiss the Balgaddy option and flatly refused permission for Treasury's scheme on what the developers regarded as spurious grounds.

However, hot on the heels of having its plans to redevelop the Stillorgan shopping centre shot down by An Bord Pleanála for the third time, Treasury has won an unexpected, albeit interim, victory in its do-or-die struggle against Barkhill and the county council's planners.

For the board has just ruled that Balgaddy is, after all, a "generally suitable" site on which to develop the Lucan-Clondalkin town centre, including the quantum of retail space proposed. And that ruling has thrown a cat among the pigeons in this long-running saga.

According to the appeals board, Balgaddy is the right site for such a development, given its "central location" in relation to development in the greater Lucan-Clondalkin area, its proximity to the Dublin-Cork railway line and the provisions of strategic and retail planning guidelines.

The board said it also had to take into account the "limited impact" of the proposed development on the national road network and forthcoming improvements to the transportation infrastructure serving the area, such as upgrading the railway line which runs right by the Balgaddy site.

However, it also made clear that the scheme proposed by Treasury, as currently designed, "is not acceptable and requires modification", and has given the developers until February 20th to redesign it - principally by reducing its density and omitting its podium form.

Not surprisingly, Treasury Holdings greeted the board's ruling with "extreme satisfaction", saying it felt vindicated on the central issue of Balgaddy versus Liffey Valley and it had "every confidence" that it would be able to meet the board's requirements for a more sympathetic design.

The developers will have to complete a 12-point shopping list of issues raised by the board, produce a new set of drawings and a revised environmental impact statement and probably submit themselves to a resumed oral hearing at which all of these matters would be fully ventilated.

The Grosvenor-O'Callaghan consortium, which owns a 60-acre site adjoining Balgaddy that was once touted as a future national stadium, needless to say, objects strenuously to Treasury's plans, arguing that Liffey Valley represents the best available option for town centre designation.

Three years ago, however, An Bord Pleanála refused planning permission for a scheme that would have doubled the size of Liffey Valley, largely on the basis that it would aggravate traffic congestion on the M50 - as the Dublin Transportation Office had argued in its submission on the appeal.

The board's latest ruling in favour of Balgaddy indicates that it would not be minded to grant permission for any fresh plan to aggrandise Liffey Valley, however much this is favoured by South Dublin's planners. In fact, it suggests that Barkhill would face another refusal on traffic and other grounds.

A further obstacle for Barkhill is that the members of South Dublin County Council decided without a vote in March of last year not to proceed with a proposal to rezone Liffey Valley as a "major town centre" until the Mahon Tribunal has reported - probably in three years time.

The council is due to produce a new draft county development plan next month and it will be interesting to see whether that document reflects its planners' current preference for Liffey Valley, in the face of An Bord Pleanála's decision to uphold the plan devised more than 30 years ago.

Reacting to what the board had to say, a spokesman for Grosvenor said its ruling amounted to a comprehensive rejection of Treasury's existing plans and noted that there was a limited time-frame in which they could be re-cast in a form acceptable to the appeals board.

"In our view, Treasury doesn't have a sufficiently large site to accommodate the amount of development they are proposing in the form that An Bord Pleanála wants to see - in fact, we believe it's near impossible for them to achieve the scale the board is looking for."

Ultimately, given that Treasury is clearly trying to pile too much onto its relatively small site, it might have to negotiate with Grosvenor and other large property owners in the area, such as Dublin City Council, to agree on how any town centre might be developed in the Balgaddy area.

And with the economy no longer as strong as it was during the "Celtic Tiger" era, the real question is whether Dublin can continue to absorb acres of new retail space, wherever it is located.

So Treasury's victory on the issue of principle, if not of form, may turn out to be Phyrric.