Vacancy Watch: A row of six buildings lying derelict on Main Street in Rush

Michael Heather occupied a corner table in the Strand Bar on Upper Main Street in Rush, with an iPad, a folder and a coffee in front of him.

It was a windy and grey Monday afternoon, and Heather, a director of Rushbury Properties Limited had come in to talk about six of his company’s properties.

They’re all right across the street – numbers 12, 14, 14a, 16, 18 and 20 Upper Main Street. And the houses are currently on Fingal County Council’s derelict sites register.

For more than a decade, Rushbury Properties Limited has tried to turn the site into a mixed-use development, including a supermarket, restaurant, shops and a new post office, says Heather.

But it’s faced setbacks, including the effects of the 2008 crash and trying to pay off a loan with a high rate of interest from a lender, he says.

“It has been very difficult and unfortunately it’s just become a mess, the whole thing. We can’t do anything until we have the loan, in some way, settled,” he says.

These six houses include three two-storey homes, two semi-detached, and one detached. Their windows and doors are covered by decorative boards, showing fake windows with curtains, potted plants on two-dimensional window sills.

There is also a former post office. It’s surrounded by grey hoardings, and the roof has collapsed.

Similarly, next door is a sky-blue single-room semi-detached bungalow. Most of its roof has come down, exposing the wooden rafters.

That small bungalow, 14a, is connected to 14, a thatched cottage with yellow pebbledash walls. A protected structure, this was constructed circa 1780, according to the National Built Heritage Service, and is defined by its steep roof.

Locals have been so angry about their current state, that Heather was invited to a public meeting in early April by the Fine Gael local area representative Eoghan Dockrell to explain why their redevelopment has taken so long, he said.

“They sensed my own sense of frustration,” Heather said.

It has been an issue coming up a lot on doorsteps in the lead up to the local elections, says Dockrell. “People are rightly disillusioned and disappointed that this has been dragging on for years.

A decade of setbacks

Rushbury Properties Limited first applied to Fingal County Council to develop the six properties along Upper Main Street in January 2013.

They wanted to turn the site, including the protected thatched cottage and two properties to the rear on Bollum Lane, into a mixed-use commercial and residential development.

This proposal was set to consist of a discount supermarket, a post office, office space, a gym, restaurant and four homes, with the cottage to be repurposed as a public exhibition space, according to the application.

A spokesperson for the supermarket chain Aldi said last Friday that it is one of the intended occupants of the future development.

All of the buildings, except for the cottage, were to be demolished.

The council approved the plans in February 2013. That was appealed. An Bord Pleanála eventually granted permission in June 2013.

But there were setbacks, including the ongoing impact of the recession and the death of the owner of the thatched cottage, Heather says. “We had agreed a contract with that gentleman, but he became very ill and unfortunately he died.”

The owner’s wife became the executor. But she passed away a year later, he said. “And we lost about three years waiting for that process.”

In 2016, Rushbury bought the cottage, shows a 2017 planning report to the council.

A majority of the other buildings were held in receivership by a financial institution, the planning report says.

This excluded the former post office in number 10, Heather says.

Rushbury acquired the land in receivership after they got the first planning consent, Heather says. “The receiver gave us a subject-to-planning deal.”

But the sale and the change of ownership process took a long time to go through, with Rushbury unable to secure the funding to finance the project until it had completed these legal matters, according to the 2017 planning report.

Four years after the original application, on 13 November 2017, Fingal County Council granted Rushbury an extension to the planning permission.

Early the next year, on 14 February 2018, Rushbury took out a loan from Clonmont Limited, records from the Companies Registration Office show.

The loan, on top of their own investment, was to buy all of the buildings from the receiver, Heather says.

When asked about this loan, Heather says it was to be a short-term, three-month loan with a high interest rate kicking in after that period.

Rushbury was going to develop the site for Aldi, Heather says. But they faced delays while trying to close that deal. “Aldi said they would like a larger store, so it meant we would need to go for a new planning permission.”

The timing was unfortunate, Heather says, because the loan coincided with Aldi’s request for a larger store and Rushbury had only anticipated that it could pay off the loan when the store was at the originally proposed size.

Fingal County Council gave Rushbury permission to expand the supermarket site on 12 September 2022.

Since getting planning, Heather says Rushbury have been attempting to settle the loan with Clonmont.

Clonmont didn’t respond to queries.

On the register

A council report to Fianna Fáil Councillor Brian Dennehy in January 2019 said seven people had complained about the conditions of the buildings.

The council had been in contact and written to the owners and their representatives about the properties, the report said.

On 12 June 2019, the six properties were listed on the Derelict Sites Register. That file remains open, a council spokesperson said in mid-May.

As of April 2024, that register held 19 buildings across Fingal.

A site that makes the list is subject to a levy of 7 percent of its market value in the first year, and up to 10 percent of the market value in subsequent years, according to the council’s website.

The council’s register estimates the site’s value at €1.5 million.

Heather received a letter from the council in March 2024, which said that the site was on the register. That, he says, was the first instance of when he became aware of this matter.

Heather says it surprised him then to learn, while sitting in the Strand Bar in mid-May, that the site had been on the register since as far back as June 2019. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

A council spokesperson said that it doesn’t comment on individual properties. They did confirm it had been listed since 2019 but didn’t say when they had informed the owners.

Seeking a resolution

Dockrell, the Fine Gael local area representative, says that the site on Upper Main Street offers a rare chance to expand Rush’s retail offerings.

“Houses are popping up all over Main Street, but in terms of developing Rush in the years ahead, there’s this great big site that could be used for something that isn’t residential,” he said.

Rush Community Council, a local voluntary organisation, had asked Rushbury Properties Limited if they could use the thatched cottage as a meeting space, Heather says. “A place for gatherings, perhaps art displays.”

The existing planning permission includes toilets with wheelchair access, he says. “We’re going to do that. We’re going to give it to them. That will be a gesture from us to them.”

But Rushbury Properties’ hands are tied right now, he says and his concern is that if the loan is not settled, the company will have to put the site into receivership or liquidation.

“Neither of which we want to do, and neither of which any of the community want,” he says, “because it will lie vacant for another three, four years.”

They have considered selling the properties, he says. “We have had quite a number of discussions with interested parties.” But they have never discussed a sale to the council, he says.

If the existing planning permission lapses, the town will be stuck looking at the vacant site for a long time, he says. “That’s clearly not what we want. We want to develop it.”