Landmark €25m riverside student flats set to soar
The riverside development, on a former sawmill site, will have bridge access to the main and westward-expanding UCC campus via bridges through to the new IT campus at the greyhound track site, and back across the river again to the Brookfield house new medical faculty.
The development, to accommodate 300 third level students in 60 purpose-built apartments, will have public riverside walks through it as part of a plan by Cork City Council to open up the city’s riverways as amenity walks.
Developer Paul Montggomery, owner of Reardons and Scotts bar in Cork city who is now moving into property development along with Edmund Kenneally, is behind the planned development at the Victoria Cross sawmill site at Victoria Cross in the western suburbs which he quietly acquired earlier this year.
The likely purchase price for the c1.1 acre V-shaped peninsula site was over €5 million, though property negotiator Niall Cahalane would not confirm a figure. The sawmill and hardware company owned by the McEvoy family, which had been based at Victoria Cross since 1947, has relocated to a new site near Ballincollig.
The award-winning architect for the scheme is Derek Tynan, one of the country’s best known designers, responsible for the Gate cinema in Cork and the Heuston stations Gateway plan for Dublin, as well as Dublin’s Clarion Quay apartment plans.
According to Mr Tynan, the Cork proposal fits in with the city council’s aim to move students into purpose built accommodation, and should help return previously residential areas and former family homes bought up by investors and let out to private use. Other tax-driven projects in and around UCC and Victoria Cross will see well over 1,000 new student places provided in the next 18-months, mostly with 24-hour security and on-site services.
The building proposed is to be zig-zag shaped, rising from five storeys facing up the Carrigrohane Straight Road and Victoria Cross, through six storeys and with a cantilevered nine storey section at the apex. It will have 75 car parking spaces, one per apartment, and 15 visitor spaces. The proposed finish is a high quality, pale coloured clay tile for the sleekly modern buildings.
The setting is where the Curragheen River joins the southern channel of the Lee just before it flows past UCC’s main campus.
Derek Tynan Architects have prepared EIS and visual impact studies for planners and residents, which will show it broadly on a height level with the new medical faculty building to go on site at Brookfield House across the river.
A steel frame is envisaged for a rapid build, with prefabricated pods further speeding the building process using a method used by the architect at Clarion Quay in Dublin.
Other student accommodation developments include Fleming Construction providing 300 spaces, UCC with about 200 student beds at the former Nagle tiles site is also well advanced in construction. In addition, the college has recently bought the old M&P O’Sullivan cash and carry site beside the Victoria Cross sawmills and is considering options for it.
The city’s longest established purpose built student complex, Brookfield Holiday Village, is directly across the Curragheen river from the sawmill site.
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