Council to make decision on plan

ATHLONE Town Council will decide today if it is to give the green light to a major €150 million development that has met with strong local objection.

Gallico Development re-submitted its plans for the 6½-acre site in the centre of Athlone - just eight months after their original plans were rejected by and Bord Pleanála.

Their new plans include a 161-room four-star hotel, 163 residential units, 1,151 underground car spaces, covered streets and a covered public square.

Gallico Development has told the local Town Council that this new development will turn Athlone into an “urban quarter of national and international excellence.”

One of the main promoters behind the development is the owner of the Hodson Bay Hotel on Lough Key, John O’Sullivan. Mr O’Sullivan could not be reached for comment yesterday on how Gallico Development has revised its plans for a new project in its fresh application to Athlone Town Council.

Among the six objectors to Gallico Development’s new plans is the local oral surgeon, Michael McGrath - he was also the sole objector to the original proposal. Mr McGrath is now particularly unhappy with the new hotel planned for the site, which he claims “dwarfs the previous unacceptable proposal”.

In his submission to Athlone Town Council, Mr McGrath referred to the previous Bord Pleanála case and said: “Only after considerable time, effort and expense on my part, were the inadequacies of the previous proposal exposed to rigorous analysis and condemnation by an independent arbiter, the board.”

The other five group of objectors to the Gallico Development plan are: two local doctors, John Rice and Patrick O’Meara who run a surgery beside the site; local residents Harry and Marie Buckley, Angela and Niall McCormack, Mary Dolphin-Thornton and Brian Thornton; and Dublin architect, Alan Mee.

They are objecting on the grounds of: loss of privacy, destruction of a residential amenity in the area; traffic chaos; loss of sunlight; impact on the skyline, noise pollution; impact on the environment, destabilisation of the existing properties and downturn in property prices. The Buckleys are objecting to a telecommunications mast on top of the hotel’s tower structure.