houses.

[Sniper]

150,new houses,going in on Turvey,and new entrance just past beverton,mind the road it gets very slippy,when wet.

[dfletcher]

I thought that a limit existed on the construction of 150 houses per year in the area?? This development with the proposed HSE development in Portrane will bring our community to a stand-still!

[Tico]

what rule is that ??? Planning for the hospital wont even be decided till next April and thats if they get planning.

[Aido82]

its not 150 houses in that new development this year. I imagine it is 150 in total in that development which will take the guts of 4/5 years

[Austy]

It's 168 houses plus a crèche over a 4-5 year period. They are being built by Hora Developments who are currently finishing the last of a small development in Beverton. I must say, having bought one of their houses, they are good operators, good quality houses and the sites are always clean. The also have a road sweeper machine, so I'd imagine that Turvey Ave will be kept somewhat clean.
Always handy to look at the planning permission applications with Fingal CoCo, you can see the full plans etc.

[jayflame]

I would have thought they should be finishing existing developments before starting any new ones.

The block at the entrance to The Gallery is an eye sore for Donabate Village and should be either finished or pulled down before any new sites are started.

Or am I wrong to think that?

[BRUCE]

I can see your point, but when you say “they should be finishing existing developments before starting any new ones”. who are you talking about? who is ‘they'

We don’t live in a communist regime, so house building in this country is reliant on private developers. One has no control over what the other is doing. You can’t expect developer A to wait until developer B finishes a project up the road before he/she starts to build.

I’m not sure if you are wrong to think that though. It would make sense for unfinished developments to be finished before another is started, but that cannot happen in the capitalist ‘free market’ we currently exist in.

[padraig]

No Bruce "We don’t live in a communist regime" but Fingal county councill have a Planning authority that should safeguard "proper development" of areas under their control. The decision for the new development site access is quite frankly rediculous and as for the unfinished building work at the Gallery, what is the enforcement officer for the councill doing sitting on his hands. I surpose they won't act if one of us don't make a formal complaint to the councill.

[Aster]

I don't know anyone who is interested in buying an apartment, but I do know plenty of people looking for houses. It makes sense to me that the builders are trying to meet the current demand.
It would be wholly unfair to punish builder A for the behaviour of builder B.
Builder B on the other hand, should be held accountable for finishing what was started!

[Austy]

Is builder B still in business??

[Aster]

I think your point is that Builder B can't be held responsible if he's not still in business. If he is in business, he should be made to complete unfinished works before being allowed to do any more work in the field. But, I am aware of how naïve that sounds and how unlikely that is.

Either way, it really isn't Builder A's issue...

[Mr. Stupid]

Rather than enforce planning, Fingal County Council extended the planning permission time for the unfinished part of the Gallery. So say, the developer's planning permission lasted to 2013 or whenever, they extended it out by another few years. There was also supposed to be a creche there but they never enforced that either.

Fingal's CC record on planning is abysmal. The new estate houses' look too close to the road and it was a perfect time to widen that road, put in a wide footpath and make it safe.

[Derek]

Rather than enforce planning, Fingal County Council extended the planning permission time for the unfinished part of the Gallery. So say, the developer's planning permission lasted to 2013 or whenever, they extended it out by another few years. There was also supposed to be a creche there but they never enforced that either.

Fingal's CC record on planning is abysmal.

Couldn't agree more. Look at what's been built in Balbriggan and Lusk in the last 15 years. They will do the same to us too. Strangely, only Malahide seems exempt from this nonsense.....

[Mr. Stupid]

Malawhite has become a sprawl. The swords rd used to be a green belt with a few little pretty bungalows. Now, it is full of sprawling estates that are near nothing. All the estates in Donabate are 15 mins from the village and train station. Malawhite some of them are over an hour walk to the village.

All of the estates in Donabate have greens for kids who don't play computer games all day to play on. Whereas some of the new estates in Malawhite have no greens. Basically Malawhite is like Castlenock. The new part of "Castlenock" is Carpenterstown but is nowhere near it. It is just gets the Castlenock address to add 50K to the price of the houses. Same with the sprawling parts of Malawhite. There are a couple of hundred houses in Waterside that are 0.5 mile from Swords village and 2 miles from Malahide. But yet they have a Malawhite address.

I think the best think we could hope for as Donabate sprawls is to have the sprawl part a new name. Like what happened with Glasnevin and Ballymun.

[EAMO888]

Good stuff. Would love to settle in Dbate. Currently renting.

[BRUCE]

No Bruce "We don’t live in a communist regime" but Fingal county councill have a Planning authority that should safeguard "proper development" of areas under their control. The decision for the new development site access is quite frankly rediculous and as for the unfinished building work at the Gallery, what is the enforcement officer for the councill doing sitting on his hands. I surpose they won't act if one of us don't make a formal complaint to the councill.

Hi Padraig. I haven’t been down Turvey Avenue in a while. I almost always use the Hearse Road. I take your word for it. Fingal have a transport department, they often state that new entrance to a road is dangerous & even fail planning proposals. Interestingly, the main planners can over rule them. As can An Bord Pleanala if the application goes that far.

With regard to the unfinished building in the Gallery, it’s an eyesore alright but, should the developer be forced to finish apartments, that probably won't sell in this economic climate, resulting in the developer going out of business & the “finished” complex falling into disrepair?

FCC policy is for greater density near town centers, so they probably wouldn’t get planning permission on the Gallery site for houses.

IMO the only sensible thing to do, is secure the unfinished phase, complete construction when viable. No doubt the banks are involved. The developer would hardly get credit to complete the phase, unless the banks thought the apartments would sell.

If I used that road, and I felt so strongly about it, I would contact FCC. Unfortunately, it would be best to do this at planning stage, rather than after planning permission was granted.

[Austy]

The new estate houses' look too close to the road and it was a perfect time to widen that road, put in a wide footpath and make it safe.

I would imagine that if Turvey Ave is to be widened, the road would be widened into the Newbridge house side as it is all owned by the same land owner, i.e. Fingal CoCo.
Now, that would be the sensible thing to do, but as with all County Councils, common sense often seems to be in short supply!

There are lots of other areas around that are pretty brutal from a traffic & pedestrian point of view, the lack of continuous footpath out Turvey Ave, the exit out of Supervalu and the view being blocked by the red-brick flower beds and also driving out of the train station car park.

[HeyMama.ie]

Is builder B still in business??

No, the builder, Shelman Properties, went bust and NAMA own it now.

http://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/S ... ted-294929
http://www.shelman.ie
https://namawinelake.wordpress.com/the-developers/
http://www.independent.ie/business/iris ... 22992.html (looks like they lucked out with a nice 3m sale just as they went under )

I heard last year that NAMA were evaluating properties that they could finish relatively quickly and cheaply to get on the market and that The Gallery was apparently shortlisted. Not sure if it went any further that that (or if, it were ever even true - coming from the grapevine and all that).

[padraig]

No Bruce "We don’t live in a communist regime" but Fingal county councill have a Planning authority that should safeguard "proper development" of areas under their control. The decision for the new development site access is quite frankly rediculous and as for the unfinished building work at the Gallery, what is the enforcement officer for the councill doing sitting on his hands. I surpose they won't act if one of us don't make a formal complaint to the councill.

Hi Padraig. I haven’t been down Turvey Avenue in a while. I almost always use the Hearse Road. I take your word for it. Fingal have a transport department, they often state that new entrance to a road is dangerous & even fail planning proposals. Interestingly, the main planners can over rule them. As can An Bord Pleanala if the application goes that far.

With regard to the unfinished building in the Gallery, it’s an eyesore alright but, should the developer be forced to finish apartments, that probably won't sell in this economic climate, resulting in the developer going out of business & the “finished” complex falling into disrepair?

FCC policy is for greater density near town centers, so they probably wouldn’t get planning permission on the Gallery site for houses.

IMO the only sensible thing to do, is secure the unfinished phase, complete construction when viable. No doubt the banks are involved. The developer would hardly get credit to complete the phase, unless the banks thought the apartments would sell.

If I used that road, and I felt so strongly about it, I would contact FCC. Unfortunately, it would be best to do this at planning stage, rather than after planning permission was granted.

No Bruce, there is still something called "substantially completed" under planning whereby the structure approved need to be at least 60% completed by the time the planning runs out. If not it is up to the councill to enforce it. There's been a catalogue of interesting planning decisions made in the Donabate Portrane area, indicating a slightly disjointed approach to overall joined up thinking!!

With regard to the entrance to the new development being build, I surpose one should not rely on Fingal County Councill to make sensible decisions that would effect the wider comunity!!

[Lo-cal]

In a recent update sheet distributed in Beverton from Independent Councillor Paul Mulville on recent Council matters, it refers to The Gallery apartments. The following is the reply received by Councillor Mulville to his request for an update: "There is an Extension of Permission on this development (F04A/1163/E1) which expires on 17th April 2015. The apartment blocks are at an advanced stage of construction at present. The developer has been contacted and expects to re-commence building in mid-February".