Douglas golf club deal off

THE €100 million bid for Douglas Golf Course may have fallen through. Members met this week at the club's AGM anticipating lucrative offers and two new 18-hole golf courses and a new clubhouse.

However, no firm details have been revealed to the members.

Despite rumours of three or four more offers, this did not come up for mention during a 40-minute debate at the four-hour AGM. Meanwhile, the 95-year-old golf club is to go ahead with its spending plans for other improvements at the course.

In fact, members were told that a second bidder's offer, via a solicitor's fax, which was revealed prior to Christmas has not progressed beyond the initial approach.

Club members were informed that subsequent discussions were being held with the first interested (but still undisclosed) bidder. "This has been general discussion to date, not negotiations," a source stressed after the meeting as the club's management committee declined to comment publicly on the talks.

Another club member described the sale discussion as "a damp squib, there was nothing to say".

Local property market expectation is that any plan to re-develop the golf club for house building would face an uphill planning struggle, initially at least and that, in any case, if the club were to be sold, it would be placed on the open market.

All of the city's main property developers have said they aren't behind the opening salvo bid, leaving Dublin's Manor Park as a likely out of town contender.

Cork County Council planners have already quietly voiced their disapproval of any plan to relocate Douglas Golf Club to allow large volumes of new housing to be built in its stead. They point out that even if replacement lands were ceded around Carr's Hill/Carrigaline, there'd still be a loss of amenity in the greater Douglas area

New housing would be visible on the skyline between Maryborough Hill and Carr's Hill as this is a protected ridge, and the thrust of the two local authorities' joint CASP strategy for future housing was to encourage new development north and east, along rail lines, not to add to Douglas' traffic congestion and pressures on services.