In East Wall, locals want a longtime derelict site, Cody’s Yard, turned into a park with a sensory garden

Beside Crosbie’s Yard apartments in East Wall lies a large disused site surrounded by train tracks. Locally, it’s known as The Meadows or Cody’s Yard.

Bushes peek over high metal fencing, topped with barbed wire. Signs warn against entry and of CCTV.

“This is an empty site that has been sitting here for as long as I can remember,” says Deirdre Murray, on Moy Elta Road, a street of red-brick terraces just south. “It’s had lots of anti-social behaviour, bonfires, illegal dumping.”

“We call it the Bermuda Triangle,” says Daniel Ennis, a local election candidate for the Social Democrats, and vice chairman of East Wall Bessborough FC.

That’s because of the shape of the site but also, no one knows what goes on there, he says.

Ennis wants the council to buy the site and transform it into a park as part of its greening strategy, he says. East Wall is so grey, he says.

The north east inner city has a shortage of green space in general and East Wall the problem is even more pronounced, according to the council’s greening strategy.

Locals imagine a community garden and sensory garden for neurodivergent kids, they say.

“Anything that was there for the kids to kick a ball has been built on,” says Michelle Curtis, who co-runs a support group for parents of neurodivergent children in the north inner-city.

“It is essential for neurodivergent kids that there are green spaces to play,” says Rachel Kane, who runs the group with Curtis.

The two pieces of land that make up the site, though, are owned by an investment fund, E to Infinity ICAV, show land registry records. Planning documents for the site have E to Infinity ICAV acting for a sub-fund, Blacklion Real Estate Fund.

A representative of Blacklion said Tuesday that the company didn’t wish to comment on its plans for the site.

Longing for a garden

Although many local residents don’t have gardens, they are still keen gardeners, says Murray.

Some, like herself, are members of the community garden in North Strand, she says. “We would have a good idea of how a community garden works.”

Children really benefit from learning how food is grown, she says. Older people get somewhere to sit outside, she says.

Ennis says that local children in East Wall need green space to run around and play informally.

He points to the transformation of Mud Island in North Strand, a smaller site turned into a community garden about five minutes away.

“Imagine Mud Island meets Diamond Park. Sensory playground, community gardens and allotments,” he says. “If you are allowed to re-imagine it, the possibilities are endless.”

Kane and Curtis have been looking for a spot for a sensory garden in the area. But the green space is all taken, for development, they say.

Curtis says she has four children. She took her older three to loads of activities, including sports and dancing, she says, but it was a different picture when her youngest, who is autistic, reached the age of 6.

“There was nowhere to go,” she says.

She, and Kane, and a few other parents of autistic children got together to arrange activities.

They approached the local football club, East Wall Bessborough, where Ennis agreed to run a football experience for neurodivergent kids, says Curtis, called Football for All.

They got a swimming club going too, and boat trips. “It literally exploded overnight,” she says. Forty-six families take part in activities now, she says.

Curtis says that Football for All has transformed the children’s ability to socialise as well as their overall health and well being. “We have seen how the children improved.”

They need to find a spot for a sensory play area for neurodivergent children because it would transform their lives, says Kane. “That would be a huge thing for the area.”

“It’s hard to explain the isolation that you feel as a parent of a child with additional needs,” says Kane.

The support group has changed all that. “We really found a new community within our community,” she says.

At Cody’s Yard

The site at Cody’s Yard has a chequered planning history.

The council gave permission, in 2002, for a six-storey development of apartments and offices and enterprise space, says a planner’s report.

But in 2009, council planners refused an application for office blocks on the site.  At the time, Iarnród Éireann said it would need this land for the planned DART underground.

In September 2021, An Bord Pleanála planners said more thought needed to go into a proposed application from E to Infinity ICAV for 146 build-to-rent homes. At the time, the land was zoned for employment uses – and there were still question marks about  Iarnród Éireann’s plans.

Councillors’ rezoning of the site in 2022 to a strategic development regeneration area (SDRA) in the council’s new development plan should have gotten rid of the zoning obstacle to putting housing on the lands.

In February 2022, consultants for E to Infinity ICAV wrote to the council and welcomed the proposed change in zoning. But, it also flagged other concerns, like restrictions in the development plan on build-to-rent developments, and the requirement for buildings set back from the road with own-door ground-floor access.

It is unclear how much uncertainty around the very long-term DART underground project and its route may still affect the site, too. A spokesperson for Iarnród Éireann said: “The alignment is currently under review by the NTA.”

Meanwhile, Kane says that when she was young there was more green space around but it has all been snapped up for development. “Raising children in the north inner city is not easy.”

The Meadows site has been vacant as long as she can remember, she says, used as storage for bonfires and illegal dumping.