Council says it’s done waiting for developer to build a Dublin 8 sports pitch and has a new plan to get it done

Dublin City Council is looking at working with the Land Development Agency (LDA) to develop a “municipal pitch” and changing rooms at St Teresa’s Gardens in Dublin 8, council officials have confirmed.

“Once planning is granted DCC will jointly develop the pitch and changing rooms with the LDA,” South Central Area Manager Bruce Phillips and senior architect Martin Donlon said in a written statement last week.

This signals a change after long delays in providing the promised amenities, which were supposed to be built by the private developer Hines under a deal struck in late 2020.

Three and a half years ago, councillors backed a plan under which the council would give two pockets of land worth €9 million that it owns to Hines.

In exchange, Hines would build a full-size GAA pitch, with dressing rooms and new facilities for the local boxing club too, and give the difference in cash.

There wasn’t any other funding for the pitch, said a contemporary report from officials to councillors.

A spokesperson for Hines said at the time that if councillors agreed to the swap, the target was to have planning in place by June 2021 and the pitch built by the end of 2022.

In July 2022, Hines did put in a planning application for 345 homes on the former Bailey Gibson lands, and the sports pitch on part of the St Teresa’s Gardens site. A decision was due in November 2023, said a council spokesperson, but is still pending.

In the meantime, at the request of councillors and the local campaign group Sporting Liberties, the council looked at an alternative route to speed up the planning, said the spokesperson.

And the council intends to press ahead through a Part 8 planning route, said the council spokesperson. Part 8 is basically when the council applies to itself for permission.

Dublin City Council “remains committed to the development of these facilities at the Donore lands even if the Hines planning application fails to be determined”, the council spokesperson said.

The council hasn’t yet replied to a query sent Tuesday asking what now becomes of the two parcels of council land – with room for more than 120 homes – that, under the development agreement back in 2020, were to be swapped with Hines.

A spokesperson for Hines did not respond when asked who will be paying for the pitch and facilities to be built.

Nor did the council spokesperson directly say who would fund these. But “the development agreement between [Dublin City Council] and Hines was subject to the Developer successfully obtaining planning consent for the relevant development”, the spokesperson said.

A long wait

Across the site of the former St Teresa’s Gardens flats, the morning snow had mostly melted away by Friday evening leaving long grass, red sorrel weeds and litter.

The 1.74ha site just off Donore Avenue has been overgrown since the council demolished ten of the twelve flat complexes in 2016 to redevelop the site, beginning with a row of social houses on Margaret Kennedy Road.

But the former playing pitches, behind the Player Wills site on the South Circular Road, have been like that even longer.

They’ve been gone now for almost 20 years, says local Andrew O’Connell. “It’s turned into a jungle, back to nature.”

Dublin City Council closed them up after it established the St. Teresa’s Regeneration Board in 2005, according to the City Architects website.

The council had planned a public-private partnership development to replace the old apartments with social and affordable homes, private apartments and community facilities.

But then the recession hit in 2008, says O’Connell. “And those plans went out the window.”

Three and a half years ago, councillors agreed to back a plan to deliver a full-sized pitch on the site as part of the land swap, topped up by cash, with the developer Hines.

The rethink to this new way of getting the pitch built has been necessary because the pitch has been in the pipeline for far too long, says Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty on Friday. “The delivery mechanism with Hines has been entangled in all sorts of delays and setbacks.”

Once it gets Part 8 planning, the council will develop the pitch and changing rooms along with the LDA “as part of the overall delivery of the mixed use scheme” the LDA got planning permission in June last year to build at the St Teresa’s Gardens site off Donore Avenue.

This is to include 543 homes. “Contractor procurement is underway and construction will commence this year. The Development will be delivered in phases to 2028,” according to Phillips and Donlon’s written statement.

Delivering it as speedily as the council can needs to be the priority, Moriarty says. “I understand [the council] is working on ways in which to disentangle itself from the Hines arrangement.”

O’Connell says that losing the pitch in St Teresa’s Garden all those years ago really damaged the area, he says. “Specifically with the local soccer club, St Teresa’s F.C.”

“At the height of their success, they had ten to twelve teams and catered to 200 children,” he says. “But when the decision was taken to cease the pitches, the clubs in the area fell apart.”

People have been crying for something to happen for years now, he says.

The LDA’s planned 543-home development, known as the “Donore Project” is already set to include the boxing club, said the council spokesperson.

The club itself wanted that, and being included within this development that already has permission lowers the risk of its delivery being obstructed by any planning challenges, said the spokesperson.

“Such as those arising to date leading to inordinate delays in developing these lands,” they said.

A spokesperson for the LDA says that it hopes to be on site at St Teresa’s Garden in late 2024. “Once the boxing club is moved into the new space, work on the pitch can begin.”

Dublin City Council is now “working closely with Sporting Liberties in agreeing their requirements for pitch (GAA, 2 No. Juvenile soccer and 1 adult soccer), changing rooms and boxing club”, said the statement from Phillips and Donlon.