Dun Laoghaire Thread. No traffic, commuting, transport chat.

crushproof

I'd hardly put it in the realms of preservation status and would like to see that site properly developed but unfortunately that plan for the house looks ridiculous. Shame it got preservation status as this site has been derelict for far too long.

Mav11

To my mind if ABP grants permission, it would really bring into question the value of county development plans and preservation orders. Essentially it would turn these into time wasting activities by local authorities, an expensive joke. Also undermines local consultation exercises, with local democracy becoming a bit of a sham!!

so when are they planning on demolishing the whole of the Dun Laoghaire and replacing it with apartments?

It would be nice if the council was able to actually have some teeth and stop all these apartments being built. It is almost impossible for a young family to buy a house in the area now.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118282971#Comment_118282971

Have a look at house vs apartment ownership across Europe. The Irish obsession with house ownership is an outlier. It is perfectly possible to have kids in an apartment (speaking from experience with multiple kids). If we continue to build low density semi-d's, all it does is push up the price of housing so young families can't afford to buy.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118282971#Comment_118282971

More apartments getting built in the area drives down the price of renting apartments. Which means groups of 20/30somethings can then rent apartments (as they do in functioning property markets) instead of renting 3/4/5bed houses in a group as is very common here currently. Which then drives down the price of renting/buying said houses for families, because they're now not competing with the young people.

Building apartments is the most efficient use of the very limited amount of developable space in Dun Laoghaire to drive down house prices.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118282971#Comment_118282971

I'd rephrase that, and ask when will they replace a lot of Dun Laoghaire with apartments built with family/long-term living in mind?

And then ask that of basically all the big urban centres in the country.

We cannot seem to get ourselves beyond the mindset of apartments for young/single people, for the short-term until they get a house.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118284308#Comment_118284308

but not building houses drives p the prices of people wanting to rent houses, so people stay in apartments, which pushes the prices up.

And don't kid yourself that people are building developments like the one in Harbour Road Dalkey, or even this one in Monkstown, because they care about people renting apartments, they are only interested in squeezing the maximum amount of profit out of the smallest piece of land.

Larbre34

Stand-alone houses for first time buyers inside the M50, is over. History. Forget it.

That said, the apartments I've seen in the Honey Park/Brickfield site and those being built in Cherrywood and Brennanstown are perfectly adequate for family living in the long term.

If any mindest needs changing, its that of people seeking to buy, thinking that they may accumulate as much 'stuff' as they want and expect the market to cough up a large home for them to accommodate it all, at an affordable price. Irish people need to visit cities on the continent or in other Countries, where the notion of a house on its own plot in an urban area for ordinary working people, would simply be laughable.

On the Tedcastles house specifically, the developers are taking this piss with a design to build literally on top of it, but they know this well, its only testing the water on the site more generally. A design that leaves the house to stand alone will be easily approved there.

JayRoc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118285075#Comment_118285075

Honestly I think the Honeypark-type template is fantastic and should be repeated everywhere. I'm sure the government has loads of reasons why that isn't possible and peons like us just wouldn't understand

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118285056#Comment_118285056

No.

Lets say theres a plot of land in question. DLRCOCO can either approve for build-to-sell:

5 town houses. Which will take 5 family units out of the current rental market

or

30 2 bed apartments. Which will take 30-60 family units out of the current rental market (depending on how many buyers rent out their spare room).

The latter removes far more people from the rental market who're there currently, so has more of an impact in driving town prices.

Its just a question of what uses the space more efficiency. Which will always be apartments rather than houses.

Viscount Aggro

Honeypark has a lot of affordable and social housing.

dublinman1990

There is one big positive here for Dunleary House in that it allows plenty of people the opportunity to pay cheaper rents every month if they get approved to live in these proposed apartments.

Another benefit of this proposal is that the tenants who would live in this apartment block will have plenty of opportunities to use high levels of public transport links in the surrounding area such as the Dart in Salthill & Monkstown and plenty of bus services which are provided near Cumberland Street & York Road.

But the way in how the apartments look over Dunleary House look very unusual. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It's a very odd design to officially state to ABP that this was the best design available out of possibly many more functional design proposals that could have been considered for the site.

I wonder what those in ABP will have said when they had a look at the 1st impressions of this design when the application was submitted by the developers. Would they, in secret, burst out laughing or would they able give more positive views on the proposal?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118286060#Comment_118286060

which is absolutely fine, as long as people only need 2 bedroom apartments.

What then happens when they need a 3 bedroom place because they have two or three kids? Then the rental price on 3 bed places goes through the roof.

Say people could happily bring up two kids in a two bed apartment, where ae the 300 kids that grow up n this ne development going to go to school? Where are they going to play in the middle of winter?

it isnt just about building two bed apartments. that might seem like a great idea when that suits your own needs, but decent planning means a mix of housing to suit different people's needs.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118285075#Comment_118285075

that doesn't mean houses for second time buyers should also be out of the question.

Lets be honest here, the problem isn't the market or people's expectations, the problem is pure **** greed.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118289427#Comment_118289427

No. Again, because theres still less demand overall for the 3bed houses. Because they're no longer full of young people in their 20s and 30s in house shares.

Dun Laoghaire has anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3rd the amount of apartments in the apartments:houses ratio it should have, according to demographics and demand. The statistics are very clear that the "mix" has already got far too many houses, using up far too much space, and far too few apartments.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118289902#Comment_118289902

I have seen rents in my area go from €1500 per month to €3500 per month over the past five years, because there is a shortage of three bedroom houses for families to live in.

You can give some property developer "we must build more flats, make them smaller and build them higher" bullshit all you like, but that is the reality.

It is just pure greed.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118290082#Comment_118290082

You've seen rents rise because theres a shortage of all accommodation in Dublin, not specifically three bedroom houses.

The reality that Dublin's problem is a lack of apartments, not 3bed semi-d houses, is not some property developer bullshit. Its completely academically accepted, statistically proven, fact.

Ireland has the lowest % of its population in Europe living in apartments. This is completely and utterly unsustainable, and a disastrous misuse of our urban space:

https://i.imgur.com/6cbyW2P.png

Moving forwards we're going to need to shift 20%-40 of the population into living in apartments in urban areas, who're not currently doing so.

the most sparsely populated country in europe needs to shift 20-40% of its population in to apartments.

think about that for one minute.

dublinman1990

If you're building new apartments in Dublin; of course people can be happy to hear that some guarantees will come from their landlords that their monthly rent can be reduced once they are built & finished.

But how much can the rent be reduced for privately built apartments based within Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown when you're trying to compare them to other apartment buildings that are already built or being proposed in other parts of Dublin?

If the big problem in this country along with other counties is the cost of living; would you think that building newer apartments will have much of an effect in reducing their prices for people who want to move into them?

We had some statistics out recently that the number of rented housing units in the private market around was at an all time low. That bit of news tells me that if building newer apartment blocks was one of the bigger answers in the reducing the burden of high rent prices. Property Developers would need to build a much bigger substantial amount of them to make the rental prices go down substantially around the country for the prices to be at a decent sustainable level.

And politicians around the country need to give these developers an actual chance to actually get them built in their own constituency. There tens of thousands of people out there who do need to get something built so they can no longer live with their own parents house's any longer.

Blut2

Ireland as a whole is sparsely populated because comparatively nobody lives in Mayo or Kerry or Donegal or similar counties with large amounts of land but very few humans. Nobody is suggesting people need move into apartments in rural areas where land is abundantly available.

Dublin, and more specifically for this thread Dun Laoghaire, are the issue. Cities are where people live in apartments in every other first world country. But currently under 8% of our Irish urban population lives in apartments, versus anywhere from 40-65% in other similar European cities.

Thats completely unsustainable for any number of reasons - land usage/population density, environmental concerns, urban sprawl, cost of living, continuing population growth..etc. Which is why its going to have to change rapidly.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118290854#Comment_118290854

so building huge apartment blocks in the towns and villages around Dublin is being done to actually prevent Urban sprawl?

I totally understand building apartment buildings all over the centre of Dublin and a certain amount in the surrounding areas. What i object to is the assumption that because somewhere is on the Dart, we should build apartments there.

Dun Laoghaire is a commuter town. Commuter town s should be where people live that are happy to trade off a bot of a longer commute with a larger living space. Not somewhere people are forced to move to and live in apartments because they have been priced out of living in the place they want to commute to.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118296012#Comment_118296012

Dun Laoghaire is part of Dublin. It's not and hasn't been a commuter town in a very long time. Balbriggan, Maynooth and Bray (just about) are commuter towns. And the parts of those towns near higher quality public transport should be higher density apartment blocks or the people living there will have to drive which makes them more likely to drive to Dublin anyway.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118296281#Comment_118296281

If Dun Laoghaire isn't a commuter town, then what is it? It is a town where the majority of people who live there commute each day.

Is the trade off simply that if you want to catch the train to work, you have to live in an apartment?

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118296361#Comment_118296361

It has its own employment areas and it's close to many employment areas other than the city centre. It also has plenty of amenities that people from outside the area will travel to it for. Perhaps crucially, Dun Laoghaire isn't a town at all any more, it's an area that is part of Dublin city. By your definition almost everywhere in Dublin is a commuter town.

And yes, if you want to live in a large urban area and be very close to rail based public transport, that I think you should be living in an apartment because it makes the most use of scarce land. If you want to live in a house, you can live slightly further away from the train station. I live in a traditional 90s semi-D in suburban Dublin and I'm a 10 minute walk from the Luas. It's a tremendous waste of space! The apartments springing up all around me are far better because they put more people closer to public transport.

Larbre34

There are really only 3 cordons to be concerned with. Inside the canals, inside the M50 and outside the M50.

Dun Laoghaire is a high demand area for housing and its precisely because its on excellent public transport links to the City Centre that housing will be intensified in it.

Ireland's population is gone from 3 million to over 5 million in less than three decades. We can either have our kids buying their first homes in Athy and Navan forever or we can get with this programme like the rest of the civilised world.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118296012#Comment_118296012

Dun Laoghaire hasn't been a commuter town since the 1800s...

Its an inner suburb of Dublin, that has Dublin's best public transport system running through the heart of it. Its possible to commute to the heart of Dublin in 20 minutes from it. Its pretty much the definition of "suited to apartment living" as far as urban planning goes.

And yes, building high density apartment blocks in Dublin is literally the number one way to stop urban sprawl. If all we built were 3 bed semi-ds Dublin would sprawl out to Laois to sustain its population. High density apartment blocks prevent this by letting more people live in smaller areas.

You're clearly shouting into the void here anyway with these rants, so I'll stop explaining. But at least now you hopefully know, even if you can't accept it, why almost every single large development moving forwards in the area is apartments. And very much needs to be.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118296654#Comment_118296654

or build a decent public transport system so that people can live in Navan and work in Dublin.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118296659#Comment_118296659

so when we've finished filling Dun Laoghaire with Apartments buildings all along the front, what next? Start building Apartment blocks in Killiney, or Shankhill? thank god these apartment blocks are stopping urban sprawl.

How about rezoning places that are actually in Dublin, like Ailesbury Road, or Sandymount and build apartment blocks there?

People want to live in Dun Laoghaire because it is a nice place to live with premium property prices. This means the property dvelopers can make stupid amounts of profit by cramming as many small apartments on to as small a space as possible. It needs balance. which is why the council has a development plan.

Unfortunately ABP seem to think ignoring this and building developments of 100+ apartments in unsuitable laces, such as Church Road, or Harbour Road is ok.

Larbre34

There are apartment blocks in Killiney and Shankill. Lots of them. Look at the old Killiney Court site. And Shankill is getting several thousand new homes on the Shanganagh-Woodbrook lands.

And in fact, countless big houses in Killiney are either being demolished to be replaced by higher density or having additional housing being built in the grounds. This is the model now.

Dublin 4 has a huge number of apartments and high density new housing continuously coming on stream too. Ailesbury Road might be an exception because so many of the houses are run as embassies and unlikely to be sold on, but the point still stands.

And I've news for you, Dun Laoghaire is actually in Dublin also. Just like any urban village, Rathmines, Stoneybatter, Blanchardstown, all Dublin....

Glencarraig

Heres whats being proposed for Leopardstown Road, directly opposite the Laura Lynn Centre. Developer has spent tens of millions buying up 10 properties on Leopardstown Road plus the St Joseph's House and Ann Sullivan Centres. Going to have access from Leop Road and Brewery Road, the latter through a very small estate called Silver Pines, totally inappropriate. Access to Leop Road will be left turn only which will just create ratruns through Leop Avenue and Drive.

0_Leopardstown-SHD-pic-image-credit-Model-Works.jpg