Council Refuses Office-To-Residential Conversion For Ballymore’s Vacant Meridian Site

Dublin City Council has rejected a planning application from Ballymore to convert a vacant office building into apartments.

The council cited a lack of outdoor amenity space and car parking at the Royal Canal Park, Dublin 15, in its decision.

Ballymore has had corporate offices at Beacon Building, Royal Canal Park, since 2018, but its nearby seven-storey Meridian building has remained vacant and has only been completed to shell and core.

Ballymore said that it had been advised that the cost of fitting out the building to a suitable modern office spec would exceed the value of the space and blamed the lack of demand for office space on its secondary location, the design of the building and a lack of car parking.

In its application, it said that the office space developed had been marketed by Savills, but “despite this no inquiries for the sale or lease of the building has been received for over 12 years.”

In its planning application, Ballymore proposed converting the office space into 28 apartments: 14 two-bedroom units, seven three-bedroom apartments, a pair of two-bedroom units and five one-bedroom apartments.

“Given this and the current housing crisis, it was decided that the optimal use of the existing structure would be to convert to residential use," its report said

However, the council refused the application due “to the total absence of access to external communal amenity space in the proposed development and the failure to provide well-considered, high-quality compensatory measures.”

The council found that the proposed development would fail to provide an adequate level of residential amenity for future residents, given the lack of any outdoor amenity space for the majority of units.

In mitigation, the council’s planner’s report acknowledged the existing vacancy on-site and said the change of use from office to residential was acceptable in principle in an area where mixed-use regeneration is being encouraged.

Elsewhere in Dublin, Ballymore is constructing a scheme to regenerate and open the gates of the historic St. James’s Gate site to become the Guinness Quarter urban neighbourhood in Dublin 8.