Aldi wins Elysian go-ahead

A rare and clear run through planning has been secured by Aldi for a new store at the ground floor of Ireland’s tallest building, the Elysian, right next door to Cork’s City Hall.

The letting to Aldi will add to the rent-roll at the €150m tower mixed-use complex, developed by O’Flynn Construction, and which forms part of Project Tower, a Nama €1.8bn loan sale, which went to a short list of six bidders last month, and where a sale over €1bn may be decided within weeks: it will be one of Nama’s largest portfolio sales.

There were no observations or objections on the Aldi store plan, now set for the base of the Elysian tower. Planning permission was lodged in the week before Christmas 2013, which means there can be no third party objections to An Bord Pleanala.

City Hall’s grant of planning last week had just seven quite standard conditions attached to it, noted retail observers, saying it was unusual for any supermarket with alcohol sales not to attract any planning objections.

Aldi now is set to fit-out a typical-sized 17,000 sq ft store in the 17-storey Elysian’s south-west corner, facing the south city link road, and will have basement parking. It will follow rapidly on the heels of Lidl, who opened a basement level store in the Cornmarket Centre in late February.

Aldi’s grant continues a clean planning sheet at the Elysian site as the €150m completed development on a three-acre site also got through planning in July 2005 without being referred to An Bord Pleanala.

Less successful is the current proposed nine-storey office scheme proposed by BAM/Progressive Commercial Construction Ltd (John Cleary), fronting the Elysian tower site onto Albert Quay, and which has been referred to An Bord Pleanala by Monahan Road Developments, by Elysian Management Ltd and by An Taisce.