Council abandons plan to use flats as student housing

A PLAN to convert derelict flats in Dublin’s north inner city into student accommodation has been abandoned by Dublin City Council.

Private student accommodation agency Chubb Properties wanted to lease two blocks of flats on Dominick Street for use from this September. The company would pay all the conversion and repair costs and pay a lease fee to the council.

The Dominick Street flats were one of five social housing complexes which were to have been redeveloped as part of a public-private partnership with developer Bernard McNamara. The deal collapsed in mid-2008 largely due to reversals in the property market.

The council plans to rebuild the social housing with Government funding.

This funding has yet to be approved. But in a report to councillors, the council’s housing department said that even if the Government approved funding for housing, it would not fund any community facilities.

The report said the money from the Chubb deal would be ringfenced to provide such facilities. It said it could see “no disadvantages” to the plan, which would allow “productive use of units which would otherwise be vacant or demolished”. It would save the council money in managing boarded-up units and would not delay construction of new housing, which would not begin until 2013 at the earliest.

“While the units do not meet the modern expectations they do comply with the requirements for student accommodation, which are not as high as the standards for permanent living accommodation,” the report said.

The plan was welcomed by local councillors last month, but was subsequently dropped before it could be presented to the full city council for ratification.

Carol Chubb of Chubb Properties, which already manages student accommodation at Herberton in the redeveloped Fatima Mansions area of Dublin 8 and a complex in Dublin 2, said she was “gutted” that the plan was not going ahead.

She said the company had originally proposed a five-year lease but reduced it to three years to accommodate the council’s redevelopment schedule. “The council said they couldn’t guarantee a longer lease than two years, and when we went into the finances of the improvements needed, rewiring etc, it would have been too expensive for so short a time.”

She said it was unfortunate that the blocks could not be put to good use when it was several years before redevelopment would take place – if it was granted funding – but she said she would not rule out similar deals with the council in the future.

A spokeswoman for the council said it was not possible to reach agreement as the term proposed conflicted with the council’s timeframe for development.