Homes in new Model Farm Road estate, with historic links to Apple, start at €780k
Apple of your eye? Merton is on the way on the city end of the Model Farm Road, at the former home of ex Apple VP Dan Byrne
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Model Farm Road, Cork City |
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€780,000 to €1.2m/€1.3m |
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168 sq m/212 sq m/252 sq m (1,805 sq ft/2,275 sq ft/2,705 sq ft) |
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A2 |
THERE is perhaps an appropriateness in that a man largely responsible for bringing Cork’s largest employer – Apple, with 6,000 employees and spanning 90 nationalities - to Ireland back in 1980 has lived at an address on city’s ever-growing Model Farm Road.
And, as huge-scale Apple campus building work continues on the ever-expanding northside Hollyhill skyline which home-grown electrical engineer Dan Byrne shepherded into existence in Apple’s earliest days having joined Steve Jobs' 'start-up', later becoming a vice president,) the builders are also out in force in the family’s home turf on the salubrious Model Farm Road.
Only, in this case, the creamy crop being delivered at Merton Lodge comprises 18 new homes, ranging from a couple of one-bed apartments, a few two-bed duplexes, three and four-bed semi-ds and larger, detached four-beds, all with a top address: the Model Farm Road, called after the 1880-founded Munster Dairy School, the first of its kind for ‘dairymaids’ in Great Britain and Ireland.
It's a suburban city stretch which the Price Register shows has more than its fair of €1 million+ house sales: 23 so far. Several €1m+ ones sold along the length of this long road running west from Denney’s Cross toward Ballincollig have yet to make the Register.
A number were deemed development sites hitting the likes of €2.5m in the case of St Joseph’s, opposite Merton Lodge (and where a student accommodation complex is under appeal), while several were bought simply as private homes for up to and over €1.68m in 2023, such as Bishopstown Avenue’s mid 1900s Small Acre on large gardens.
One of the biggest sales of late however was the €1.72 million paid for Merton Lodge, an extended detached house with its core dating to the late 1800s, and which has been the family home of former Apple VP Dan Byrne and family for a number decades.
Following a revised planning application, Merton Lodge itself will be no more after this year; it’s set to be replaced by new, A-rated homes in a scheme to simply be called Merton.
The name, at least, lives on on the century+old property’s c. one-acre plus of grounds, and which are all certain to get a price premium because of the ace location, between UCC and MTU and within a short walk of major hospitals like the CUH and Bon Secours.
Behind Merton is a company called Darley Developments, headed up by engineer Killian Kelly and Micheál Fenton, and it’s a leafy suburban stretch they know well. Mr Kelly’s KACE consulting engineering firm was behind the directly adjacent development Vailima, just on the western side of Merton and where seven detached homes replaced another older era home, (called Vailima, again only the name survives) and which sold in 2016 for a recorded €1.35m to developers Rockforest, but which later sold for €1.75m to be successfully developed out by KACE.
Some of Vailima’s A-BER ‘replacement’ homes have since topped €1.3m: Merton’s larger new-builds are headed up to this sort of price level also.
Coming to the open market this week are six homes at the front of the Merton site, facing the Lee Garage and St Joseph’s, and are four semi-detacheds of just over 1,800 sq ft, priced at €780,000 each on the right, and, facing, two of the four larger detacheds advancing under construton .
Two of the four detacheds, west-facing at the rear towards Vailima’s boundary, are sold already off-market, reveals estate agent Johnny O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald. Here, the larger 2,705 sq ft home will be priced at €1.3m, and the 2,275 sq ft one at €1.2m: all eight 'up-front' houses are three-storeys high.
The temptation to go for five beds was resisted, so the detacheds have great large main bedroom suite options at both first and second floor level, each with en suites and walk-in wardrobes. The largest, at 2,700 sq ft has all three mid level bedrooms en suite and the top floor one has an adjoining study.
At ground they all have open plan kitchen/dining/living rooms, with a front reception room, whilst the larger A1 type has an additional front study/play room.
The look will be traditional, masonry-built with big steel supports and with a mix of slate roofs, Kingscourt red brick, dashed render, with limestone plinth, limestone window cills and limestone front door arches.
Planning came through in March 2023, and doing the onsite delivery, to a clerley high standard is Danny Dwyer of long-established D Dwyer Builders.
Design is by Cook Architects, with consultants McCutcheon Halley also on board in the planning process, advising on density, layout and compliance with local authority and National Transport Authority aims for a future BusConnect reservation.
Delivery of the first homes, done to what’s called a ‘builder’s finish’ where buyers will choose (and, pay for) final finishes, floors, kitchens etc, likely to be broadly in the €100k additional spend region, is expected later into 2024, by which time the rear of the site will be opening up, with the remainder of the one-, two- and three-bed units (74 sq m apartments and 136 sq m duplexes) launching later this year, due for completion in 2025.
This city end will be more ‘select’ and priced accordingly. Merton joins Vailima and Ecklinville off College Road at the upper end, where the latter had nine c 2,500 sq ft new homes offered last year at c €1.3m.
Ecklinville coincidently is called after a heritage variety of apple: meanwhile, the ‘Apple’ link at vendor Dan Byrne’s Merton Lodge is far more 21st century.
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