High-octane Cork apartment site

A PEARL of a riverside Cork site, between the gates of UCC and the city centre, is for sale for €2.5m.

The former Muskerry filling station, on Western Road, was sold by Esso ten years ago, for between €5-6m, envisaged for upmarket apartments by its investor/developer purchasers, named back in 2006 as Eddie Kenneally, Paul Montgomery and Michael Cunningham.

It has full planning for 50 apartments, in two, five-storey blocks: plans for a filling station on the site were recently turned down as not being of sufficient scale and quality of use for such a profile setting: the adjacent River Lee Hotel had objected to the plans. The hotel is just across the river bend from this 0.8-acre site, where the bases of a bridge for the old Muskerry tram can still be seen in the river channel.