Council green light to town revamp

CORK County Council has given the green light to a €400 million redevelopment of Ballincollig, the biggest planning permission ever granted by the local authority.

Permission was granted yesterday, a week after the High Court ruled a settlement agreement between the Minister for Defence, Ballincollig Holdings Ltd, which claimed to own interest in the leases, and developers O’Flynn Construction.

The developers, who bought 90-acres of the former Murphy Barracks from the Department of Defence for €41m, plan to build a town centre and adjoining shopping centre in Ballincollig.

O’Flynn Construction also proposes to build nearly 900 homes consisting of houses, flats, apartments and duplexes. The company intends to build a shopping centre and covered retail area totalling 200,000sq ft in the new town centre which will also consist of a large number of offices and a hotel.

The anchor supermarket tenant will have retail space of 35,000sq ft. Overall there is enough office and retail space to create more than 3,000 jobs.

Permission also allows new roads with two entrances connecting to the main street. The council’s chief planning officer Brendan Kelleher said the O’Flynn Construction application had been of very high quality.

“The development will be exciting. A lot of good contemporary architecture will go into it ,” Mr Kelleher said.

O’Flynn Construction managing director Michael O’Flynn said he hoped to start work on the site before the end of this year. However, the application can still be appealed to An Bord Pleanála.

Ballincollig Enterprise Board president Con Nagle said he was thrilled that Cork County Council had awarded planning permission for the long-awaited project.

“I’m delighted the town will finally get the shopping facilities it needs. I expect some big name retailers to move in,” he said.

Ballincollig has a population of just over 18,000. This is expected to rise to more than 40,000 by 2020.