“I grew up in a Dublin suburb and now I live in another one. This isn’t the world of the bustling city – the urban centre. And it isn’t the romanticism of the Irish countryside.”
They rezoned the site from industrial to residential for an affordable housing proposal. Now, the land’s more valuable and the landowner is looking to sell it.
“We chose to buy this site to try to create affordable housing for normal people,” wrote the developer in a letter to a local councillor in September 2017.
These were among the issues that Dublin city councillors discussed on Monday at their North Central Area Committee meeting at the Northside Civic Centre.
Recently reopened after a year-long €3.5 million refurbishment, the library in Coolock offers everything from books and computers to meeting spaces and 3D printers.
Dublin City Council has used the same procurement model, and tenure breakdown, in its proposals to develop roughly 800 homes on a big site at Oscar Traynor Road in Coolock.
The landowners lobbied for the change and told councillors they plan to develop affordable housing there. Some councillors worry they’ll just flip it once its value rises.
