Grangegorman site was earmarked for €100 million development

The ramshackle collection of houses and warehouses at the corner of Grangegorman Lower and Brunswick Street, that has been occupied by squatters since 2013, was once earmarked for a €100 million residential, retail and office scheme.

In 2006, Pascal Conroy’s Albion Properties sought planning permission to build 220 apartments, as well as restaurants, shops and offices in blocks of up to 11-storeys high on a 0.76-hectare site adjacent to the Dublin Institute of Technology’s new campus site.

Albion’s boom-time mixed development, the largest in the area since the regeneration of Smithfield Plaza, would have involved the demolition of three Victorian terraced houses on Grangegorman Lower, now home to about 30 squatters, as well as a factory and warehouse buildings which were most recently the premises of Doors & Floors.

Nama

Planning permission was eventually granted in April 2008 for a reduced scheme of 164 apartments and the heights were lowered to a maximum of eight storeys over six blocks.

However, the property crash intervened before development could get underway and the planning permission expired in 2013.

The site fell under the remit of Nama and is shortly to be offered for sale through receivers Ernst & Young with a guide price of €4.2 million.

It is unlikely that a development of the size and density allowed in 2008 would be permitted on the site today, and apartment standards in the city have been increased since the previous permission was granted.

However, the site remains zoned as “residential and city centre” which does allow apartments, office, retail and restaurant development.

The houses on Grangegorman Lower were habitable at the time planning permission was originally sought in 2006, but they were left vacant and became increasingly derelict over the intervening years until they were taken over by the squatters.

Since then those occupying the site have developed a community garden, cultural space, a cafe and artists’ studio.

The Albion Properties proposal had included provision for a cultural space and gallery as well as a “bamboo garden”.