Irish Examiner view: Docklands redevelopment has potential to change face of Cork City

Objection to the €350m project has been withdrawn

Thu, 01 Jun, 2023 - 02:01

A significant obstacle to the planned development of Cork City’s docklands has disappeared.

In an announcement by developer Brian O’Callaghan at a Cork Business Association breakfast event, he confirmed that a major development in the docklands area, which will include offices, apartments, healthcare facilities, and retail outlets, will receive full planning permission following the withdrawal of an objection to the project.

The €350m development has the potential to change the face of Cork City. While the first stage of the project is expected to focus on constructing apartments, the South Docks scheme also envisages the demolition of the concrete R&H Hall grain silos, which the company says are not adaptable to new purposes, as well as the repurposing of the red-brick Odlums building on Kennedy Quay, which dates from the 1890s. In that sense, the streetscape itself will be fundamentally altered.

Apartments

Mr O’Callaghan also plans to apply for planning permission for an additional 1,325 apartments on the docklands which will be separate to the €350m development.

A proposal on this scale offers us a glimpse of a future where thousands of people will be living in a part of Cork which has never been a residential zone, and where the city itself will be orienting itself out towards the sea, much as Barcelona did when it hosted the Olympics 30 years ago.

It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Cork to reinvent itself and must be seized with both hands.

Way cleared for redevelopment of Cork's South Docks