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Ireland's first 21st century town gets green light

Thursday, 31 July 2008

South Dublin County Council has granted planning permission for what has been billed as Ireland’s first 21st century town. The development of the massive e1.2 billion mixed-use town centre at Adamstown will include hundreds of residential units and has the potential to create thousands of jobs. At 154,000 square metres, the Adamstown Central scheme is one of the largest ever planning applications in the history of the State. It will provide a full range of community, civic, residential, retail and commercial facilities for the new town’s expected population of 30,000. The developers of the scheme, Castlethorn Construction, claim it will also lead to the creation of over 2,500 new jobs within the town centre and its immediate environs. The new town centre will have 60 retail units including restaurants, cafés and bars, a nine-screen cinema and 600 apartments. Once the tendering process is complete, Castlethorn estimates that up to 1,000 jobs will be created during its construction. Other elements of the scheme include a primary healthcare centre, an inter-church place of worship, a leisure centre and swimming pool, a library and ‘ideas store’, enterprise centre and several civic squares. Castlethorn said leasing of the retail element of the town centre development was already “bucking current market trends” with anchor retail and leisure tenants secured over two years in advance of scheduled opening dates. They also said they had secured national and international fashion retailers. The new town centre is a key element of the Strategic Development Zone (SDZ) plan by South Dublin County Council, which laid the guidelines for the Adamstown neighbourhood infrastructure. The town centre development is on schedule for completion ahead of the original plans for Adamstown as set down in the planning master plan. Jude Byrne, senior project manager for Castlethorn Construction, said the announcement was an “important milestone” for Adams-­ town. “Our focus is on delivering the long term vision for Adamstown as a complete community, not just a town,” he said. “We will soon see the 1,000th home occupied and have already delivered key facilities, such as the train station, QBC, bus service, schools and crèche ahead of schedule. The first local centre shops will also open this autumn.” A scale model of Adamstown Central is on display at this summer’s Royal Academy Exhibition in London. Adamstown Central is also one of the projects included in the ‘Evolving Norms of Housing’ exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects.