Transport links to change face of capital
Organised by developer Treasury Holdings, the meeting focused on how people will be living and working in 2020.
Rob Davies, director of Treasury Holding’s Spencer Dock Development, said two new rail links, the Metro north and the DART Interconnector, would increase capacity so that city workers would no longer have to spend hours commuting by car.
Mr Davies said there would be city centre developments in the coming year too.
“There is this perception that there is an oversupply of apartments but that is not the case,” he said. “By 2011, there will be 30,000 people living and working at Spencer Dock, within a five-minute walk of the LUAS and the proposed DART Interconnector.”
Mr Davies said international experts were “bullish” about Dublin’s future. It was important, he added, to look beyond the economic situation and discuss the long-term status that Dublin should have internationally.
“Dublin has a strong identity that we can capitalise on. With the new transport investments a positive picture emerges.
“Now is the right time to be thinking about how Dublin can have an improved international standing when we emerge from this recession. We can use this quieter economic period as a time to devise a strategy for the next 20 years of development which will help us in our planning, and hopefully be of use to others as well.”
Meanwhile, Treasury Holdings hopes to begin work on the first phase of the Ballymun Town Centre regeneration in a year’s time. The new development will feature a shopping centre and, possibly, leisure facilities, including a cinema.
