Dunne to seek planning for hotels site

Property developer Seán Dunne is to lodge a planning application for his proposed development on the site of the Jurys Ballsbridge and Berkeley Court hotels in Dublin 4 with Dublin City Council today.

Mr Dunne will also make public his controversial plans for the Ballsbridge site tomorrow.

The public has been invited to view the plans in the lobby of the Berkeley Court Hotel from tomorrow until Sunday.

The plans will also be made available on the website of his company, Mountbrook Homes, tomorrow.

Mr Dunne paid €379 million for the five-acre site in 2005, and his initial proposal, which he outlined to residents and local councillors earlier this year, involved a scheme comprising a 36-storey block and six other multistorey high-rise blocks with space for residential, retail and office units.

The initial plans included a provision for two pubs, a jazz club, a theatre, an ice-rink, a shopping centre and various other retail outlets.

In a letter to The Irish Times last week, Mr Dunne said his proposed development comprised 536 apartments and a 220-bedroom hotel that would generate employment for 4,300 people.

He also revealed that he had bought the contents of the Berkeley Court Hotel, and was considering reopening it.

Mr Dunne is due to make a presentation to senior figures in the property industry in the Berkeley Court before submitting his plans to the council.

"The people invited to the presentation are going to get a lot more detail than anybody has got to date," said a spokesman for Mr Dunne.

However, Mr Dunne has excluded city councillors from the presentation, despite initially inviting them.

In a letter, he said the invitation had been sent to them "in error", as they were not stakeholders in the development.

Mr Dunne said he would be willing to make a full presentation to the council if invited to do so by the city manager or by the council itself.

The spokesman said local area councillors had already viewed the plans. He said the invitation sent to all 52 councillors was due to an administration error.

However, local councillor Paddy McCartan said the invitation may have been withdrawn because councillors from the southeast area, including Pembroke, Rathmines and South East inner city wards, rejected the council's draft area plan for Ballsbridge in May which would have allowed for high-rise developments like those proposed by Mr Dunne.

Cllr McCartan, who replaced recently elected TD Lucinda Creighton on the council, said: "It raises queries that obviously he knows he is not going to get it past the southeast area because we were the ones who rejected it in the first place.

"He obviously feels that if they present the plans to either the city manager or the council itself, that they may be more amenable."