Planning sought for €106m Cork University Business School

The former Brooks Haughton on the site between Copley Street and the South Terrace, Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

An application has been lodged with Cork City Council for permission to build a landmark €106m Cork University Business School.

University College Cork (UCC) has filed its planning application for the development at the former Brooks Haughton site in the centre of Cork city, which would see that site demolished and a new six-storey building takes its place.

If approved and developed, the project would result in almost 4,000 students and 180 staff relocating from the current campus on College Rd to the new business school.

The site is at the location of a former builder’s yard, between Copley St, Union Quay, and South Terrace.

Under the proposals filed with the council, the new building would include a foyer with coffee dock, lecture theatres, academic offices, study and teaching areas, a restaurant and bike storage areas.

The sites at 18 and 19 South Terrace would also be renovated to provide for a further café and study space. Works to the public realm would include the widening of a footpath on Copley Street, a pedestrian crossing at the western end of the street, and a courtyard garden accessed via the South Terrace, including a rooftop terrace and rooftop garden.

Plans for the new development were first mooted as far back as 2019. The Trinity Quarter site had been bought in 2008 for €15m by a Dairygold-related company, Alchemy Properties. UCC paid an undisclosed sum for the 1.46-acre site, but it is thought likely to have been in the region of €16m.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner in June, the head of the Cork University Business School Professor Thia Hennessy said the Covid-19 pandemic had delayed progress on the project, but that work had resumed with a view to finalising a planning application this year.

“I think it will be a very exciting project for the city,” she said. 

“By the time it is ready we would be bringing almost 4,500 people into the city.” 

Alongside traditional lecture halls and theatres, Professor Hennessy said the design would incorporate flexibility for the various spaces and be informed by learnings gathered during the pandemic.

Upon development, the CUBS school will complement the existing Centre for Executive Education which opened in 2018 in the refurbished Savings Bank on Lapp’s Quay.

Submissions can be made on this planning application until January 19, 2023, with the council setting a date for a decision to be issued on 9 February.