Sean Dunne's Tower Refused by An Bord Pleanala - Symbol of the Boom?

http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/0130/dunne.html

An Bord Pleanala has refused permission for developer Sean Dunne's proposal for a 37 storey tower in Ballsbridge. Residents have called for an investigation into the City Council because of the inconsistent planning that they claim fuelled and encouraged crazy speculative land prices. Elected councillors opposed the scheme.



Dunne bought the 7 acre hotel site in 2005 for a record Irish land price of €57 million an acre. Costs of the planning and design process would have been into the millions.

He spent over 500 million assembling the site - 200 million of his own and the rest loaned from banks, including Rabo. In December, he said he had not been reckless.

http://buckplanning.blogspot.com/2008/12/sean-dunne-denies-reckless-d4-spending.html

This glittering and wonky tower, which turns out to have been all in the mind, is perhaps a good symbol of the Irish boom.

Was it refused permission due to its alarming lean to one side?

That was apparently what made it "iconic"

That teenager in the front of the picture looks like she has a real attitude problem. Stand up straight and stop cooking your brain with that mobile phone girl.

I must say, I cannot join in the schadenfreude of others who are happy to see Dunne go down. I don't particularly like the guy and I didn't particularly like his plans for an area I used to frequent. However, I am a long way from feeling happy just because he is feeling pain.

Some of the people who are cheering his demise on other sites should sit back and examine their consciences. Some of them are taking pleasure in his hurt rather than oin the fact that the scheme was turned down. Why is that? Is it jealously? Is it the rage of an intelligentsia who don't like to see others getting too far ahead of them? Or is it the base dislike of those who have been made "celebrities" by our gutter quality press?

Judging by the artist's impressions the development would have brought some scorching weather. Now the cut price hotel rooms will bring who knows what into the area.

I always generally felt it was a pure shame there were no real high-rises in Dublin - having lived there five painful semi-commuting years it was one absent feature that I for one ranted at and that could now be a manifestation of a kind of hidden string-pulling that skews prices, architecture, city planning and people's lives and communities.

There has been a muted conspiracy theory under the surface which rattlees on along these lines but for which there is unfortunately no evidence.

I hope some surfaces eventually.

Zhou_Enlai wrote:

That teenager in the front of the picture looks like she has a real attitude problem. Stand up straight and stop cooking your brain with that mobile phone girl.

I must say, I cannot join in the schadenfreude of others who are happy to see Dunne go down. I don't particularly like the guy and I didn't particularly like his plans for an area I used to frequent. However, I am a long way from feeling happy just because he is feeling pain.

Some of the people who are cheering his demise on other sites should sit back and examine their consciences. Some of them are taking pleasure in his hurt rather than oin the fact that the scheme was turned down. Why is that? Is it jealously? Is it the rage of an intelligentsia who don't like to see others getting too far ahead of them? Or is it the base dislike of those who have been made "celebrities" by our gutter quality press?

Judging by the artist's impressions the development would have brought some scorching weather. Now the cut price hotel rooms will bring who knows what into the area.

I don't feel either scadenfreude or pity. Mr. Dunne made a very foolish buy. Anyone buying a house site for 100,000 euro would be advised to buy subject to planning permission. Developers when they pay a high price for lands to some extent take a gamble that their financial clout and the value of the scheme will force through an "over the odds" grant of planning permission. Its a form of bullying I don't hold with and is plainly chancy.

I think there are other culpable parties here: whoever loaned 300 million should have looked for a proper business plan: as Mr. Dunne says that the price was arrived at by asking his wife to pick a figure over the phone, there clearly wasn't one. Also, I think the residents have a very good point that the City Council allowed uncertainty over a prolonged period about what would and wouldn't get permission. It was clear that councillors for the area were opposed to it and to the best of my memory there was not a proper adopted local plan that provided for this development.

In the UK, when a site like this comes up for sale, the local council would provide the same development brief to anyone enquiring, giving details of the height and area that would get permission.

At the end of the day, no one wins and a lot of time and money has been wasted.

at least the loan was from Rabo .

The UK certainly has better planning restrictions for this sort of thing but they are not a nirvana. Things are better these days but near our place in England there is an 18 story block in a village the Irish equivalent of which would be something like Maynooth... talk about a disaster.

So it's Ulster Banks problem now then? The debt must be serviced by them and as long as they can do that the damage will be limited to Ulster Bank, Rabo and Dunne himself.

http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?p=197763#p197763

I'm just glad it wasn't Anglo .

johnfás wrote:

at least the loan was from Rabo .

The UK certainly has better planning restrictions for this sort of thing but they are not a nirvana. Things are better these days but near our place in England there is an 18 story block in a village the Irish equivalent of which would be something like Maynooth... talk about a disaster.

Yurp, no Irish banks involved. Mind you, the builder with the head of blond curls was on primetime last night to tell us no-one was servicing their loans in the construction industry, so I'm sure all banks are feeling the pain

Re British planning, oh yes, they're brilliant. Which is why they built 500 family homes on a toxic site where I, a scientist, could smell carcinogenic chemicals of my acquaintance half a mile away in the OPEN AIR. The whole town knew about it, but were all too scared to report the council. Who, coincidentally, had a 25 mill bill for their swanky new offices coming their way at the time

The large semi public entity for which I worked managed to half build a building and then had to leave the girders rust for a year and half after a local council found out they had NO planning permission for it. Get this, the buildings officer had been PROMOTED such that he was not longer responsible when they came around looking for someone to blame, while the guy on the council who was the other half of the verbal agreement had mysteriously moved to Oslo. 3 million taxpayers money down the plug'ole, and the staff all told to keep mum or else. One building of the local hospital was built several meters too close to the motorway and they spent months deliberating as to whether to move it...

Meanwhile, in the picturesque and EXPENSIVE little rural English Village from which my husband hails, all his class have moved away because all the second homer merchant bankers priced the locals out of the market and the Rules are actually enforced there. Surprise!!!!

Why does everyone in South Dublin who has never tried actually living in the UK think it is a paradise on earth??

Count your blessings!

expat girl wrote:

Meanwhile, in the picturesque and EXPENSIVE little rural English Village from which my husband hails, all his class have moved away because all the second homer merchant bankers priced the locals out of the market and the Rules are actually enforced there. Surprise!!!!

You think this is any different here?

1) Try buying a primary home in somewhere like Enniskerry if you are from there.

2) Try competing against second home buyers if you live in many areas of Kerry.

this is not unrelated in my grisly, twisted little mind ..

Commuter counties hardest hit by house price decline

House prices in commuter counties of Kildare, Louth, Meath and Wicklow fell by almost 17% last year as the property boom ground to a halt, figures showed today.

The overall cost of buying a home across the country dropped by 9.1% compared to 7.3% in 2007.

Data from the 2008 House Price Index compiled by the ESRI and permanent tsb also showed the average price of a house for first time buyers fell by 14% in 2008.

The ESRI said prices in 2009 are expected to fall by a further 10% and the market is unlikely to recover until at least 2010.

ESRI economist David Duffy said: “Buyers will have to be convinced that the economy has turned the corner before confidence returns.

“While the price reductions are significant, things are not as serious as the 30-40% declines of international property markets such as in Finland in the early 1990s.”

The average price paid for a house in Ireland at the end of 2008 was €261,573 – compared to €287,887 at the end of 2007 and €310,632 at the end of 2006.

Niall Grady, general manager of business strategy at permanent tsb said: “The message is clear – after a decade of exceptional growth, we’ve entered a period of retrenchment in house prices and while the impact is being felt everywhere. There are certain areas such as commuter counties where the pressure has been particularly intense.

“Looking forward, while it’s hard to speculate over a year-long period, we don’t expect any significant change in the established pattern of this year and are guiding therefore to a further decline in average national prices in the order of 10% during 2009 with some significant variations to that in different areas.”

There was decline in average prices in Dublin of 11.7% and of 10.2% for houses outside the capital.

The permanent tsb/ESRI index is based on actual transaction prices which the organisations deem to be an accurate reflection of the market conditions.

In December 2008, the price of houses nationally declined by 0.9% during the month, compared to a drop of 0.5% in November.

The average price paid was €261,573 compared to €264,026 recorded in November.

Meanwhile, Housing Minister Michael Finneran today allocated €94m towards building 26 new voluntary and co-operative housing projects in 19 local authority areas countrywide.

“We are facing into difficult times but it is vitally important that we continue to invest in our communities,” he said.

“This is not the time to lose focus on our objective of building sustainable communities where people will like to live, work and play in.

“Despite the challenges, the Government will continue to ensure that individuals and families in need of social housing supports will be given the opportunities to have these needs met in a way that is appropriate for them, now and in the future.

“We will do this by finding more innovative ways of delivering social and affordable housing.”

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhsnqlaucwcw/

They would fall by the largest percentage because you will probably find a large percentage of people who live in the outer commuter belt have no interest in living there, detest the fact they can't get anywhere without driving and they are also more likely to have a larger immigrant community - which is now falling - than the inner suburbs which have always been more expensive to live in. If you are lucky enough to have a stable job with a stable income right now, you can probably buy yourself a house far nearer Dublin than you could 18 months ago... so naturally the outer lying areas are going to suffer. Quite what will happen to them in 10-15 years is the scary bit.

Most of those commuters should have been able to avail of decent apartments at a decent cost nearer to if not in the city centre. This is what that blondie builder Mick Wallace believed should have been the whole thrust behind public policy. Instead we get low-rise, overpriced, low-quality nonsense in the city centre and a potential commuter wasteland extending for miles and miles outside Dublin and into Leinster ...

Jaysus

Auditor #9 wrote:

Most of those commuters should have been able to avail of decent apartments at a decent cost nearer to if not in the city centre. This is what that blondie builder Mick Wallace believed should have been the whole thrust behind public policy. Instead we get low-rise, overpriced, low-quality nonsense in the city centre and a potential commuter wasteland extending for miles and miles outside Dublin and into Leinster ...

Jaysus

Wallace is the only member of the CIF worth listening to. A builder with insight and understanding of spatial issues is rare and the government should have listened to what he had to say. But unfortunately, Wallace does not have an interlocuter in government of similar intellectual capacity. Another chance missed.

Slim Buddha wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

Most of those commuters should have been able to avail of decent apartments at a decent cost nearer to if not in the city centre. This is what that blondie builder Mick Wallace believed should have been the whole thrust behind public policy. Instead we get low-rise, overpriced, low-quality nonsense in the city centre and a potential commuter wasteland extending for miles and miles outside Dublin and into Leinster ...

Jaysus

Wallace is the only member of the CIF worth listening to. A builder with insight and understanding of spatial issues is rare and the government should have listened to what he had to say. But unfortunately, Wallace does not have an interlocuter in government of similar intellectual capacity. Another chance missed.

In this set-up, I doubt if such "oddballs" would ever be listened to in a consultative manner but it should be enough that they are respectfully listened to without being dismissed disparagingly as cranks, which the likes of Wallace too often were.

Wallace is here on the Late Late nearly two years ago now talking about I suppose the coming brownfan world of Ireland Inc. in 2009. Maybe not - I haven't seen it since then but will again later to see if what he had to say was any way prescient.

http://www.rte.ie/tv/latelate/20070330.html

I think that it was summed up fairly well over on the other place: Chump Tower. Definitely a tribute to the vanity and inanity of the Celtic Tiger. Given the way that the Sindo and Sindonista journalists were running a campaign against the residents of D4 (calling them "Leafies" etc), tomorrows Sindo should be a laugh.

Regards...jmcc