'Upside-down' housing scheme planned for site of former Cork city pub
The proposed residential development on the site of the former Evergreen Bar in Cork city which has been described as a reworking of the Victorian back-to-back housing scheme.
A planning application has been lodged for an 'upside-down living' residential development on the site of a vacant former pub in Cork City.
Against the backdrop of the housing crisis, the architects behind the proposal for the site of the former Evergreen Bar in Turners Cross say the idea is to create a new innovative housing model that will allow for the “modest densification and renewal” of a site that could also deliver a suitable approach to compact growth on similar sites which are dotted across the city.
They also say the approach proposed on Evergreen Road could solve the impasse between local authorities seeking high-density apartments on the one hand, and developers and homebuyers seeking family-sized city dwellings on the other.
Almost two years after planning was granted to a previous applicant for five ‘dwellings’ and two apartments on the site — a project which never happened — a new planning application has now been lodged with Cork City Council seeking permission for nine residential units at 32 to 34 Evergreen Road.
The new applicant, Edward O’Connor, has sought permission for the demolition of an existing rear extension, the change of use and internal and external alterations of the former pub, to facilitate nine units comprising three one-bed houses, four two-bed houses, one one-bed duplex unit and one three-bed duplex unit.
The application also seeks permission for private amenity areas, and private amenity space to the rear to serve numbers 31 and 35 Evergreen Road, car and bicycle parking with vehicular and pedestrian access via Murphy’s Gardens to the rear.
The architects have designed “a low-rise high-density infill” scheme which they say increases the number of homes granted in the 2021 permission without reducing quality of life or negatively impacting the existing amenity of adjoining residents.
They describe the proposed housing model as a reworking of the Victorian back-to-back housing scheme.
But to overcome some of the shortcomings of that kind of housing, the architects have turned the housing “upside-down” with the bedrooms and bathroom on the ground floor and the living/kitchen/dining space on the first where light and space is maximised.
They say this approach has been successfully tested in Chimney Pot Park, in Salford, Manchester, where 349 back-to-back terrace houses have been transformed to provide “acceptably large family homes of 1,000 sq ft” in a high-density format.
The Evergreen Bar closed in February 2018 after trading for more than 50 years. A planning decision is due in early May.
Meanwhile, plans for a six-storey 25-unit apartment block on a site between 36 Lower John Street and Upper John Street in the city centre have been stalled.
The planning application for the redevelopment of the site next to Nagle’s Crash Repairs has been deemed an incomplete application, and it will have to be resubmitted.
