Ballincollig’s brownfield site is a residential launch pad

IT’S easy to see from this aerial photograph why the experts call this a brownfield site. The central swirl of bulldozed earth is 90 acres of land in the centre of Ballincollig - soon to become Cork’s 21st century town.

This week, Sherry FitzGerald launches the residential part of this €500 million undertaking, which will take seven years to complete.

The flyers have already gone out for the sale of 28 houses, a trickle for the 871 units to come in the town centre’s time frame, with the first releases ready for occupation by spring 2005, says Trish Stokes, new homes director with Sherry FitzGerald, who heads up the residential sales from a dedicated marketing suite on Main Street.

Work is also ongoing on the 17,914 sq m shopping centre, a town centre with a range of shops and a large plaza, an office campus in the old Barracks Square as well as high-rise and surface parking.

That still leaves some land left over for a hotel site and other developments for which the developers invite suggestions.

The town centre follows a master plan for the then Murphy Barracks site commissioned by the Department of Defence from consultants Brady, Shipman and Martin. When the site was put out to tender, O’Flynn Construction were successful with their €40 million offer and outline plans for the 90-acre site. The company used four architectural firms for each area of the development and work began in early spring.

A settlement which grew up around the gunpowder mills in the late 1700s, and which boomed as a satellite town in the 1970s, Ballincollig has suffered from a lack of amenities and poor infrastructure. Now that’s changed with the town centre and new bypass.

Ballincollig is a bit of a sleeping giant, really, because you can’t see the huge scale of activity from Main Street. The old barracks wall hides it from passers-by and strict health and safety regulations mean every inch of the 90 acres is fenced off from the public.

Peter O’Flynn of Colliers Jackson Stops, who along with HOK are in charge of the commercial end, envisages an October ’05 completion date for the shopping centre portion of the scheme with an anchor tenant yet to be confirmed, but Dunnes Stores remain favourites.

The spine road, which links the west with the east end of town is two-thirds completed and the former Barrack Square has been cleared for its new role as an office campus. This and the mixed town centre should be in line for a spring ’06 opening.

The western end of the site, where the boundary meets Ballincollig Community School, is where the bulk of the residential units will be built. The bones of 470 houses, with 23 different types, will be available in this, the newly-named Old Quarter, while the remaining units will be apartments closer to the town centre.

The houses on offer in this release are four-bed semis at €325,000; three and four-bedroomed, three storey townhouses starting at €355,000 and four-bed, detached houses at €430,000.

The next tranche of releases will include starter homes from €240,000 upwards.