Council readies to apply for planning for new pitch at Donore Avenue

Dublin City Council is about to launch the formal planning process for the next stage of its big project at Donore Avenue – which includes more homes, and a long-awaited pitch, and a park.

The municipal playing pitch is to be 80 metres by 130 metres, while the 123 homes are to be mostly cost-rental and some social, said a report to councillors at the South Central Area Committee meeting on Wednesday.

"This is brilliant. It's been long in the works," said Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty, his attention on the new pitch. "It'll be the most used and sought-after pitch in the entire city, I'd say."

Social Democrats Councillor Lesley Byrne echoed that: "It's absolutely brilliant." Also, seeing the girls in the drawings in the report, playing on the sports pitch, was great for representation too, she said.

After years of campaigning by local community groups and councillors, this is the second pitch now, that's moving from wish towards reality, in an area that doesn't yet have one.

The council is also planning a full-sized pitch on the site of its depot on Marrowbone Lane.

From private to public

The planned site of the pitch off Donore Avenue sits on the much bigger patchwork of lands, some in private ownership, some public, which have long been earmarked for thousands of homes and new facilities.

The developments on these lands are being built out in phases.

Phase one of the project is already well underway. That has 542 new cost-rental and social homes, as well as “a new creche, community spaces, a café/retail unit” and “the new home for the Donore Boxing Club”, according to updates from the Land Development Agency.

The 123 homes, the pitch, and the park, are phase two.

Plans to get the pitch built have evolved. Council and community groups debated a decade ago how to get the pitch assured and how to fit it on the site. The council then struck a deal with a private developer to build the pitch, but that never happened – which led to the current proposal.

At the Wednesday meeting, Byrne said she wanted to give a shout out to former councillors, who had pushed hard for the pitch years earlier, before she was even elected.

"You read about those things, but then when you're actually in the middle of it, you realise how difficult sometimes that can be," she said.

A long history

In late 2020, the plan was for developer Hines – which owns the nearby Player Wills and Bailey Gibson sites – to build the pitch at Donore Avenue.

Dublin City Council officials – who said they didn't have the cash to do it themselves – cut a deal with the real estate company: Hines would build the pitch, facilities and give some cash, and the council would give it two parcels of land worth €9 million, with space for more than 120 homes, in exchange.

But the pitch completion date of the end of 2022 passed, and some, before officials said in March 2024 that they would take the project back, and build it out with the Land Development Agency.

Meanwhile, developer Hines has still has planning permission for 416 built-to-rent homes on the Bailey Gibson site and 492 apartments on the Player Wills site, according to an LDA document.

But Kennedy Wilson is on the cusp of taking control of that site.

“Kennedy Wilson are still awaiting CCPC [Competition and Consumer Protection Commission] approval to take control of the fund that owns the development sites," said a spokesperson in May.

Details, details

 At the meeting, councillors ran through a report, with some of the finer details of the plans.

The municipal playing pitch is to accommodate a range of sports, the report says – football, rugby, Gaelic games. There'll also be an outdoor playground and outdoor gym in areas around the pitch, it said.

Michael Pidgeon, a Green Party councillor, asked about the fence around the pitch.

The report says it'll be 3 metres high, he said, but looks lower in the renderings given the figures in the images. "Unless, they're very very tall people."

The fence will be different heights at different places, said Glen Murray, a council engineer and programme manager who was fielding councillors' questions.

Murray went through some other aspects of the plan. The homes are to be built on two different plots, he said.

On a constrained site next to the pitch, the LDA is to build out tower – part 15-storey, and part 16-storey – of 103 cost-rental homes, he said. Those are made up of 1 studio, 71 one-beds, and 31 two-beds, the report says.

A second site is to have 20 duplexes in three-storeys, which will be the social homes. They'll have own-door entrances, and south facing private gardens or balconies, the report said, and include 2 one-beds, 1 two-bed, 7 two-beds, and 10 three-beds.

The park, meanwhile, which is for now called the Players Park, is to be a green open space linking the LDA/DCC Donore Project site, with the privately owned Bailey Gibson and Player Wills sites. The plans for it have raingardens, seating and feature paving, the report says.

One question that residents in the past have raised is when changing facilities to go with the pitch are to be built, as had been mentioned earlier.

The rebuilt Donore Community Centre will have two changing rooms, but they should not be taken over as changing rooms for the new pitch, said Catherine McSweeney, a local resident, and Donore Project Consultative Forum member, at a ill-fated consultation about the centre recently.

Lands by the church – which are among those lands likely to be transferred from Hines', to Kennedy Wilson's control – had been earmarked for those changing rooms, she said.

The report to councillors doesn't mentioned changing rooms, as part of phase two. Dublin City Council hasn't responded yet to a query sent on Thursday early afternoon, asking if changing facilities are to be included.