Dolphin’s Barn development of 540 apartments under way, 16 years after proposal

Construction of more than 540 apartments on the site of St Teresa’s Gardens in Dolphin’s Barn is finally under way, 16 years after Dublin City Council proposed the regeneration of the Dublin 8 flat complex.
The Land Development Agency (LDA) was granted permission by An Bord Pleanála in June of last year for the 389 cost-rental and 154 social homes, in blocks up to 15 storeys tall.
Ground has now been broken on the site close to the Coombe Hospital, with enabling works under way in advance of the main building contract due to start by the end of the year, four years after the LDA announced it was taking on the project.
Initially, the LDA intended to build 700 apartments on the site in blocks up to 22-storeys tall, but it scaled back these plans following local and political opposition, eventually making an application in December 2022 for 543 homes, of which just under 500 will be one- and two-bedroom apartments in blocks up to 15-storeys tall.
Just over 70 per cent of the apartments will be cost-rental homes, where the rent is based on the cost of building, managing and maintaining the homes, and not market rates. The cost-rental apartments will be available to low- and middle-income earners, with the rest of the apartments allocated to tenants on the city council’s social housing waiting list.
Most of the apartments, 274, will have two bedrooms, with 225 one-bedroom apartments and 44 three-bedroom apartments.
The site, located off Donore Avenue, covers an area of 1.74 hectares (4.3 acres), and the new homes will be located next to the council’s recent development of 54 social homes on Margaret Kennedy Road that were also built on part of the former St Teresa’s Gardens lands.
Once one of the city’s largest council flat complexes, St Teresa’s Gardens was earmarked for regeneration in 2005, but the plan was scrapped in 2009 after the collapse of the property market.
In April 2013, the council announced plans to demolish 10 of the 12 flat blocks and refurbish two blocks to create 52 modern apartments, and to build 54 more houses and apartments.
Demolition began in February 2015. The refurbishment of the saved blocks was completed by the end of 2015. Construction of the new homes had been due to start in November 2015.
However, hazardous waste was found in October 2016, and the development was put on hold until the soil was decontaminated. Building of the houses eventually began in December 2018.
The full redevelopment of the rest of the site never got off the ground. In 2017, the council produced a master plan for St Teresa’s, along with the former Player Wills cigarette factory and Bailey Gibson packaging plant sites on the South Circular Road
The latter two were then owned by Nama and subsequently bought by US property group Hines. The company secured permission for large-scale build-to-rent and co-living schemes on the sites, in blocks up to 19 storeys tall.
Residents groups challenged the developments in the courts, but their three-year legal battle came to an end last November with an agreement between the two parties paving the way for those schemes to go ahead.