Vacancy Watch: The many plans for the St Andrew’s Court flats

Graffiti tags covered the sheets of metal blocking the ground-floor windows of the St. Andrew’s Court apartment complex on the corner of Fenian Street and Sandwith Street.

Someone had even managed to spray their tag on the pale pink walls outside the balconies on the first floor, one of which hosted a long-dead potted plant.

A few of the old social-housing flats still had satellite dishes, and their windows were open on Monday evening.

But nobody was inside the de-tenanted block, the front entrance of which was sealed up by Dublin City Council back in 2022.

The de-tenanting took a very long time, said independent Councillor Mannix Flynn. “It took place over the past 10 years.”

The council had, since 2018, been looking into the possibility of knocking the 14 existing flats and replacing them with more. They’d initially proposed 49.

After confirming, back in September, its plans to build 33 new ones, a council official told councillors at a meeting of the South East Area Committee on Monday, 10 February, that it has set a target to complete the long-awaited flats by early 2028.

This is part of the council’s broader plans to regenerate its flats within the South East Area, which includes retrofitting Pearse House nearby and Glover’s Court over in Dublin 8.

Though welcomed by councillors, the fact that it would take this long to get around to building 33 flats wasn’t great, Sinn Féin Councillor Kourtney Kenny said at the meeting. “Ten years is absolutely insane.”

Demolition proposals

Before the flats were built on this corner, there was a row of houses dating back to the mid-19th century, according to a 2024 conservation report by JCA Architects.

These, the report says, were demolished in 1969.

Four years later, the three-storey St Andrew’s Court flats were completed, said a 2016 report by the council’s then chief executive, Owen Keegan.

The report set out the council’s intention to turn eight bedsits  in the complex into four apartments.

Since then, the complex’s 14 flats had been used to accommodate senior citizens, said Flynn, the independent councillor. “It had been in a very dilapidated state, like much of the council housing stock.”

Between January 2017 and July 2018, Kevin Nowlan, CEO of Hibernia REIT, engaged with the council, asking it to consider demolishing the run-down complex, saying it was an “eyesore” on the street.

In December 2018, the council confirmed that it had carried out a feasibility study, looking into whether the 14 flats could be redeveloped as 49.

Then, in July 2020, the South East Area Committee was informed of the council’s intentions to knock the block down, albeit without any indication of when.

At that area committee on 13 July, councillors were informed that O’Callaghan Hotel Collections had looked to get a hold of the site as part of a land swap, Flynn says. But the proposal didn’t get the committee’s support.

“It was outrageous what [the councillors] did. That was another delay on the matter,” he said.

Two years later, in June 2022, a council report said the new block would be seven storeys tall and consist of approximately 32 flats.

Over the summer of 2023, the laneway to the rear of St Andrew’s Court became an encampment for people seeking asylum, some of whom had previously been living outside the International Protection Office nearby.

The encampment was torched after anti-migrant protests on 12 May, leaving the lane strewn with charred waste.

The lane since then, had become a dumping ground, with a huge pile of litter sitting at the very end of the road as of Monday evening.

Inside the existing courtyard at St Andrew’s Court, in large white spray-painted letters, someone wrote that the council had allowed the place to “rot”.

Get digging

At the South East Area Committee meeting on 9 September, council senior architect Sean Moylan said, as well as its intentions to regenerate the flats in Pearse House and Glover’s Court, it would be delivering 33 new flats in St Andrew’s Court.

Unlike the others, which are due to be modernised and retrofitted, St Andrew’s would be demolished completely and entirely new flats would be built.

At the most recent committee meeting, on 10 February, councillors were provided more insight into what the council had in mind.

The proposed seven-storey block would have a landscaped community courtyard to the rear, “which will have a play area, seating area, and planting that will support biodiversity,” Moylan said.

The 33 flats would consist of 12 one-bed, 16 two-bed and five three-bed apartments, he said, eight of which would be universally accessible.

The council had already applied for planning through the Part 8 process – where it applies to itself for permission – in November, with a view of bringing this to the full council next month for a decision, he said.

About 12 months after that, they intend to start on site in April 2026, he said, “with new homes being delivered just under two years after that in March 2028”.

Flynn, the independent councillor, said the proposal was preferable to the retrofitting planned for the other complexes in the South East Area. “I know it’s been a 10-year wait, but we’re here now,” he said.

But he said he was concerned about how the vacant properties surrounding the flats, and which are also slated for redevelopment, would impact on the council’s own work.

Gold Run Properties Limited – whose director is Noel Callaghan of the Callaghan Hotel Collections company – on 28 February 2024 was approved by the council to develop 87 apartments next-door on Fenian Street, Bass Place, and Sandwith Street Upper.

Later, on 18 December, the council approved an application by Gold Run Properties to revise its application, reducing the number of units to 82 by the council. That decision is now under appeal at An Bord Pleanála.

Moylan said the council would be working closely with the neighbouring developers, “and we will be engaging closely with them to see exactly what is their timeline so that we can cooperate and not get in each others ways while both projects were on site”.

But, when asked by Fine Gael councillor Danny Byrne, as well as Kenny, the Sinn Féin councillor, why it had taken so long to reach this stage, he couldn’t provide an answer.

He had only been on the project for a few years, and couldn’t comment on anything beyond that, he said. “But we are working now to get the thing on site as soon as possible.”

The delays have been really exasperating, Byrne said over the phone on Monday. “But, just bring on the diggers is my philosophy in relation to housing. Get on with it.”