O’Callaghan to invest €300m in Mahon land
O’Callaghan Properties is to seek permission to build 325 apartments, including one 21-storey residential tower, a 184-bed hotel and other facilities at Mahon.
The location is for a 10.4 acre section of land on the southern side of the south city ring road — across a busy road from the Mahon Point Shopping Centre, and a half a mile from the Jack Lynch Tunnel The site had been earmarked for the National Event/Conference Centre in the original €50m purchase deal of 111 acres of land at Mahon from Cork City Council almost a decade ago.
With the city council’s decision to facilitate an events centre currently on a docklands site, via rival developers Howard Holdings, the earmarked Mahon land is free for other uses. O’Callaghan Properties has paid about €6.2m to the local authority in lieu of the land for the centre, said a company spokesperson.
Ironically, O’Callaghan Properties (OCP) is seeking permission for quite a high residential density on land at Mahon, having decided not to develop houses there themselves originally when they bid for it back in 1996.
Instead, OCP jointly acquired the Mahon lands with McCarthy Developments taking up the residential element, for the now-successful Jacobs Island scheme of houses, duplexes and apartment blocks. With amendments to initial grants of planning permission there, McCarthys will end up building 575 units in all at Jacobs Island, where they control 42 acres, of which 19 acres is a public park.
O’Callaghan Properties is to seek city council approval for a four-star, 184 bedroom hotel with leisure centre and conference/function room, as well as 325 residential units and neighbourhood facilities, with an overall height of six storeys plus one ambitious 21-storey residential tower overlooking a compact lake/water feature.
Architects are Henry J Lyons & Partners, who designed OCP’s Jurys hotel and apartments project at Lancaster Quay in Cork city.
The developers say the mix of apartments “will exceed the new Department of Environment size guidelines and regulations”, in five residential blocks with basement car parking.
The plans will use up the developer’s remaining Mahon lands at this side of the south city ring road, and O’Callaghan Properties still have eight further acres left near the Mahon Point Shopping Centre for other retail/mixed development.
As part of the planning application, some limited widening of slip roads for access/egress to the southern side of the Mahon lands is envisaged.
Company managing director Owen O’Callaghan said the site’s convenience to the Jack Lynch Tunnel and Mahon Point Shopping Centre made it “ideally placed to connect to the various business/industrial areas such as Cork city itself, the airport, Ringaskiddy, Eastgate and Carrigtwohill”.
Subject to a positive planning result, work could start in 2008 with up to 200 construction jobs and 130 full-time jobs when completed.
