Commercial Property Ires Reit in bid for further 14-storey tower in Sandyford Close 1/1 Ires Reit has 225 apartments at Beacon South Quarter Gallery 1 Ires Reit has 225 apartments at Beacon South Quarter

Ires Reit has sought planning permission for the development of a 14-storey apartment block at the Beacon South Quarter in Sandyford, south Dublin.

Should the application be approved by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, it will see the addition of 84 apartments to the 225 units that Ireland's biggest private landlord already owns at the scheme.

An examination of Ires Reit's latest interim results shows that 636 of the 2,908 apartments in its portfolio are distributed across the six residential developments it owns in the Sandyford Business District (SBD).

Apart from the 225 units it has at the Beacon South Quarter, the company owns 65 units at Grande Central; 81 units at Rockbrook Grande Central; 189 units at Rockbrook South Central; eight units at the Forum; and 68 units at the Maple - the development of which was completed in 2017.

While the delivery of the Maple proved to be a particular success for Ires Reit - with rents for three-bed units being pitched as high as €2,750 a month in advance of its completion - the company has experienced significant difficulty in progressing plans for the construction of hundreds of new apartments at nearby Rockbrook.

In April 2017, An Bord Pleanála upheld Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's refusal of Ires Reit's application for three 14-storey apartment blocks at the scheme.

Council planners said the height of the proposed blocks would detract from the visual dominance of the unfinished 14-storey Sentinel Building on an adjacent site.

The Sentinel, meanwhile, remains the subject of a planning application by its new owners, the Comer brothers, for the development of 294 'live-work' office units and retail space.

As the Irish Independent reported previously, the plan by the Galway-born developers to complete the development and an adjoining apartment block was met with an objection from Transport Minister Shane Ross.

While welcoming a proposal for the completion of the 14-storey Sentinel - which he said "has been a visible scar on the Sandyford skyline for so long" - Mr Ross told council planners the addition of two floors to the six-storey building beside it would "be totally out of sync with the local area".

Regarding its plans for the Rockbrook site in its most recent interim report issued on August 3 last, Ires Reit said it was "progressing an application" for the development of approximately 450 apartments.

It remains unclear what building heights Ires will press for. But its thinking is expected to be informed by An Bord Pleanála's recent fast-track approval for the development of 460 apartments across five blocks, ranging in height from six to 14 storeys, on a plot of land known as the 'former Aldi site' on nearby Carmanhall Road.

Irish Independent