Digital Hub office plan scaled back

Cavan-based developer P Elliott has come back with another proposal for the Windmill site at the Digital Hub in Dublin’s Liberties, this time concentrating on the digital media office element of the site. Last October An Bord Pleanala rejected the developer’s proposal for a 45,000sq m (484,375sq ft) mixed-use development with a 16-storey residential tower, overturning planning permission granted by Dublin City Council for the scheme. The developer was also looking to build 269 apartments, 6,422sq m (69,126sq ft) of office space for digital media, more than 7,000sq m (75,347sq ft) of general office space, as well as 3,000sq m (32,292sq ft) of retail, restaurant, creche, gym and exhibition/community space. As well as citing its excessive height, the board said the “unsatisfactory design and layout of the blocks” would give rise to “undue overlooking and overshadowing between apartments and present poorly composed and unsatisfactory elevations to Thomas, Watling and Bonham streets”. It also said the high-rise cluster would detract from the setting of the 18th century Guinness Windmill, a protected structure. However this time around P Elliott has submitted a planning application for just 8,713sq m (93,786sq ft) of development – mostly comprising of digital media office space – in two blocks on around a quarter of the 3.2-acre site.

The Irish Times