Planning lodged for €40m apartment scheme on former Bessborough mother and baby home site
MWB Two Ltd has applied for planning permission for a 92-unit residential development at Bessborough, Blackrock, in Cork City.
A planning application has been lodged for a €40m apartment scheme on the former Bessborough mother and baby home estate in Cork city.
The application to Cork City Council for a 92-unit residential scheme, ranging in height from five to eight storeys, has been made by MWB Two, which was refused planning following an An Bord Pleanála oral hearing in 2021, for a separate residential scheme on another area of the Bessborough landbank.
Part of that site partially overlapped an area of land earmarked on historic maps as a children's burial ground. This new application relates to a separate site.
It is one of several live planning applications for apartments on the Bessborough estate just off the N40 near Mahon.
A separate developer, Estuary View Enterprises, is still engaged with An Bord Pleanála through the strategic housing development process, on its plans for hundreds of apartments elsewhere on the site.
This latest application from MWB Two is being project managed by PFS Private, a property development company based in Ballincollig. They are working with the Cork-based architecture firm Shipsey Barry, with local engineering firm RKA Consulting Engineers, and with horticulture and arboriculture consulting firm CMK Hort and Arb.
The application seeks permission to develop two stepped buildings ranging in height from five to eight storeys and all ancillary works to include 43 one-bed units, 30 two-bed units, and 18 three-bed units.
The scheme includes a creche with capacity for 25 children, parking facilities and bike storage, and provides for new pedestrian and cyclist entrances onto the upgraded Cork-Passage railway greenway.
MWB Two said the scheme has been planned and designed “with a focus on social and affordable housing units”. It said the project, if approved, will result in the creation of between 170 and 200 jobs in the construction phase.
PFS Private managing director, Declan Harrington, said the proposed development will provide affordable housing solutions for people living and working close to Cork city.
“This development is being designed with all of the features, amenities, and benefits expected of a modern residential development, but with a focus on sustainability and accessibility,” he said.
“The planning application for this project has been meticulously prepared, in order to accommodate a range of views on the location of the development.”
Shipsey Barry’s managing director, Glen Barry said the site is earmarked for new homes in the city council’s new city development plan which has presented a great opportunity to reimagine the area.
“The recently upgraded greenway will enable this community to live by the ‘15-minute city’ principles with the site also adjoining a large new city park scheduled as part of a wider masterplan for new communities in the area,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Cork Survivors and Supporters Alliance (CSSA), which led objections to the previous MWB Two proposal, said no development premission should be granted until the area marked on historic maps as a childrens’ burial ground is under public ownership and managed as a public cemetery.
She also said the CSSA has concerns about the potential dispersal of human remains throughout the Bessborough site after it emerged at the oral hearing that topsoil from the lands had been disturbed.
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