Site search is on for new €100m UCC Business School

No site selection has yet been made for the new €100m UCC Business School, with locations under consideration and actively being pitched to the university likely to range from being a pivotal docklands ‘catalyst’ to anchoring the proposed Science and Technology Park in Curraheen, as well as more central city sites like Trinity Quarter on South Terrace (see CGI, right).

The hunt is on for a very large Cork site for a new hub to accommodate an expanded Business School and many thousands of UCC students. The college is looking at on- and off-campus possibilities, with the aim of starting construction in 2018/19 and having students accommodated by the 2020/21 academic year. UCC has said it will be one of the country’s largest academic buildings.

The proposed major investment, which was revealed at the Cork University Business School inaugural conference in the Opera House last month, attended by 900 students, aims to build a flagship, world-class school for 4,500 students initially, across UCC’s related business disciplines and departments.

Among the sites understood to have been looked at by UCC is the South Terrace’s Trinity Quarter, where full planning exists for a 240,000 sq ft building on a 1.3-acre site owned by Dairygold, and which was previously occupied by Brooks Haughton.

That office building/site is currently being marketed for Dairygold, with work not likely to start until a key anchor tenant lease is signed.

Other sites of scale could include BAM’s Sullivans Quay building, the former Revenue Commissioners building currently earmarked for demolition and replacement by an hotel.

Sources also say that UCC may previously have looked at the Dún Mhuire building on Grand Parade/South Mall with the Kenny Group’s and Frinailla-assembled but problematic sites behind. That sole, profile, riverside building was bought by CIT, which is embarking on a €1m refurbishment.

Also suitable could be the increasingly controversial Events Centre site on South Main St, given its proximity to UCC’s main campus, as well as proximity to the College of Art, South Mall, and city centre. Among the proposals already for that mixed-use riverside site is student accommodation.

News of the hunt by UCC in recent weeks and months for a large site and building (part-funded by the European Investment Bank) may supercede the long-delayed start on the BAM/Live Nation Events Centre due to significant funding shortfalls.

While UCC’s main campus is increasingly congested and further new buildings are proposed for the historic campus and immediate surrounds, the college’s control over the Distillery Fields by North Mall, near the Boole House on Grenville Place and Tyndall Centre could provide options, with considerable acreage available; a pedestrian route and bridge via the Mardyke to the UCC’s Western Road main gates already exists.

Politically, there’s likely to be pressure to have an investment of this scale located in a setting like the north docklands (the former Treasury Building site on the quays?), or more likely the south docklands where it could serve as a catalyst for other IT, FDI, and research developments, as well as being among 5,000 residential units in a 21st century city quarter.

It would be close to the emerging new Central Business District, and to the traditional business hub of South Mall, where UCC last year bought the historic TSB building for €1.4m for an executive business hub, as it merged/acquired the Irish Management Institute.

At the city’s other end, the likes of UCC’s highly ambitious Business School might be expected to kickstart and anchor a long-proposed Science and Technology park, on 100 hectares at Curraheen, where six stakeholders (including CIT and UCC) control land banks.

That edge-of-city, west-suburban park has been mooted since 2009, and UCC last year got planning for a €12m business innovation hub there. Funding for access roads and initial infrastructure works at Curraheen has recently been approved.