Council details €30m plan to revamp Glovers Court flats, off Aungier Street

Dublin City Council is getting ready to apply for planning permission to retrofit the Glovers Court flats on York Street, in the south inner-city.

The works will see the number of homes there increase from 38 to 53, Dublin City Council senior architect Sean Moylan told members of the council’s South East Area Committee on Monday.

Unlike the council’s plan to increase the number of homes in St Andrew’s Court on Sandwith Street by demolishing the existing 12 flats to build 33 new ones, at Glovers Court the council plans to keep the existing building.

The plan is to retrofit and amalgamate the flats in the existing building, built in 1976. Then to add extensions to provide additional flats, Moylan said. 

That would involve adding two storeys onto the Mercer Street side of the block, and one storey onto the York Street side, Moylan said.

By doing this rather than demolishing the old flats and starting anew, “really what we’re doing is making the most from the existing building, while also saving CO2 in the embedded energy of the concrete structure,” Moylan said.

There will be 15 one-beds, 30 two-beds, and eight three-beds, Moylan said. “All apartments will have new balconies and access from the deck.”

All of the apartments will also be A-rated to be both energy and cost efficient, and will have adequate storage, he said.

At the centre of the scheme, there will be a courtyard, he said. “It will have a play area for children. It will have a garden, bike storage and a limited amount of car parking,” he said. There will also be a community garden, he said.

The timeline for the project is that the council wants to get Part 8 planning ready this month, which means the council will apply to itself for permission, Moylan said, with the aim then being to get a decision at the end of the year.

In 2026, they will look to prepare detailed designs and procure a main contractor for the works, with a view to getting on site in the second quarter of 2027, with the homes then completed by the end of 2028, he said.

The overall cost, said Colette Adanan, council chief technician, is expected to be in the region of €30 million. “It’s all-in cost, so that’s utilities and everything. So it’s construction cost plus everything else added into it.”

Worries

Would the Department of Housing’s new guidelines for the Design Standard for Apartments impact on this project? Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey asked at the meeting Monday.

Those guidelines, issued on Tuesday, 8 July, will see the minimum size of apartments reduced from 37 to 32 square metres in an attempt by the Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil Councillor James Browne, to increase the national housing supply.

But Moylan told Lacey at the meeting on Monday that the Glovers Court project was given stage-two approval by the Department of Housing prior to the new guidelines. 

“So in terms of the overall apartment areas, I don’t see those being affected by the new guidelines,” he said.

Sinn Féin Councillor Kourtney Kenny asked Moylan for reassurance that Glovers Court wouldn’t go the same way as Pearse House, which is also awaiting a retrofit.

In April, the council was asked by the Department of Housing to review its designs for Pearse House, because it could not support a proposal that would see a reduction of flats in blocks L, M, N and P from 78 to 44.

What was the likelihood that the department would refuse to provide funding to Glovers Court? Kenny asked. “Because they are actually gaining units here, and they’re building more, is this more likely to go ahead to the next stage?”

The project has already gone through the stage-two submission process – which is the stage where Pearse House was refused funding, Moylan said. “Now we’re at a point where we’re lodging our Part 8.”

What about security? asked independent Councillor Mannix Flynn. “I think they have to have a programme in relation to how you’re gonna actually deal with the issues of poverty, drug taking, anti-social behaviour, criminality et cetera.”

Security is of course a concern, Moylan said. “We’ve bookended the existing building with new extensions to increase the footprint of the building to gain additional apartments, but also to get a greater amount of street front facing onto Mercer Street and York Street.”

With ground-floor access via the street side, and upper floor access via decks over the courtyard, the aim is to create a sense of community while also providing a level of security, he said.