Battle lines drawn at Bray
Published: 05 November, 2007
The Pizzaro consortium has submitted a new planning application for the €2bn Bray Town Centre scheme.
A number of property developers came together to form the consortium, including Paddy Kelly and the Kelly family; the Flynn and McCormack families; Durkan New Homes; the Newlyn Group; and Pierse Construction. They spent €90m four years ago buying the site of the old Bray golf club and the former Industrial Yarns factory site - 25 ha in all.
Pizzaro has planned a large, 50,000-sq m shopping centre, which would be about half the size of Dundrum Town Centre. Dunnes Stores has signed up to take the anchor unit, either renting or buying outright. The mixed-use scheme also includes offices, 900 residential units, a luxury hotel and many local amenities. Extensive landscaping of the riverside walk beside the nearby River Dargle is also planned, as well as a footbridge linking the scheme with Bray town centre.
In May last year, Bray town council and the local county council, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, granted planning permission, which was promptly appealed by objectors who included Ballymore Properties' Sean Mulryan and Liam Carroll. Mulryan is already pressing ahead with construction of his €100m Florentine centre in the middle of Bray town centre, which should be completed in about 18 months. Carroll has plans to develop a shopping centre complex consisting of around 60,000 sq m of retail at Cherrywood, on the same Dublin side of Bray as the Pizzaro scheme.
Following the granting of planning permission to Pizzaro, An Bord Pleanala then turned down the scheme, saying it would be premature pending the go-ahead for the Bray flood defence scheme (necessary because land close to the River Dargle is prone to serious flooding) and an overall traffic management and road plan for the Bray area. Following the Bord Pleanala decision, the Railway Procurement Authority announced that it was going to extend the existing Luas light rail line right into Bray, which will necessitate a new road layout within the Pizarro scheme. When the rail route is completed, it will provide a link all the way from St Stephen's Green in Dublin to Bray, complementing the existing DART rail link.
The Pizzaro consortium has now submitted its new application to An Bord Pleanala, which includes environmental impact statements on the flooding and the traffic issues. However, the overall nature of the scheme hasn't changed much from the original design.
The new application faces intense retail competition in the Bray area, which is set to become one of the most heavily shopped parts of the country. Quite apart from the Florentine scheme in Bray and Liam Carroll's plans for Cherrywood, two big schemes are in the pipeline for Greystones, a seaside town just 5 km south of Bray.
Sean Mulryan and a fellow property developer, Sean Dunne, between them own Zapi Properties, which is planning to develop a large project at Charlesland, just outside Greystones, on its southern side. This €850m mixed-use development will include a district shopping centre and a retail park.
Further down the tracks, developer Bernard McNamara and Durkan Residential are planning a €1bn scheme for the same Charlesland area which, while mainly residential, will probably have a strong retail element. The project depends on the land involved being re-zoned but even if this happens and planning permission is granted, construction work is unlikely to start until 2011.
