Two strategically located development sites, one at Mount Annville Road, Dundrum, Dublin 14, and the other at Oscar Traynor Road, Dublin 17, near Santry, are to be sold in the coming weeks. Both properties are likely to attract the interest of Dublin's leading house builders because of the intense scarcity of sites.
Lisney may well secure over £20 million for 24 acres at Mount Annville Road, which are used as sports grounds by Bank of Ireland. The decision to vacate the Knockrabo lands was taken because the planned northern leg of the South Eastern motorway is to divide the grounds into three sections.
While Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council has not served a compulsory purchase order, it is acknowledged the site will be reduced to about 14 acres when the new roadway system is in place. The largest of the sites will have 6.6 acres with an entrance on Mount Annville Road; the second site will have 4.4 acres with a possible access from the Louvain estate, on Heidelberg Road. The third site will have about three acres off Mount Annville Road.
There is a period house, Cedar Mount, and two gate lodges on the grounds, which currently have over 800 ft of frontage on to Mount Annville Road.
While the 14 acres are zoned for leisure use, it seems inevitable that the planners will allow them to be used for a mixture of developments including commercial, a hotel and leisure centre, and housing.
Developers will have to take a view on how they see the property market performing over the next few years when deciding on the value of the grounds. The bank is not to hand over the grounds until March, 2001, to give it time to find alternative facilities in the Dublin area. However, the task of handing over part of the lands to the local authority and negotiating compensation will invariably be a long, drawn-out exercise. The roads authority will have to pay a level of compensation equivalent to the value per acre of the remaining land. But with no current planning permission on the 14 acres, it is difficult to put a precise value on the 10 acres to be used for the motorway. The selling price should easily cover the cost of replacing the grounds. Lisney is to sell Knockrabo by tender on July 8th.
Joint agents Hamilton Osborne King and Ganly Walters are quoting a guide price of £7.5 million for Larch Hill, a period house on 16.5 acres at Oscar Traynor Road, which goes to auction on June 24th.
The planners have zoned 13.25 acres for residential use and, according to architects McCrossan O'Rourke, the site could accommodate up to 250 homes. Larch Hill is well located between the Dublin Airport motorway and Northside Shopping Centre. The lands back on to Aulden Grange housing estate. It also adjoins open playing fields and is near both Clonshaugh and Willsboro industrial estates. A main sewerage drain, with a right of access to it, runs through the land.
The planners have reserved about three acres of the land for a linear park along the Santry river which forms a boundary. There is also a conservation objective for part of the gardens around the house, which is listed for preservation. Larch Hill is a rambling period house, part of it dating from the 1800s. It has superb gardens, which are a credit to the owners.
