A hotel firm owned by businessman, Eamon Waters has offered to reduce the scale of its planned Dublin city centre hotel in a bid to secure planning permission.
The revised plans have been drawn up as part of an appeal by Mr Waters’s firm, Peachbeach UC, to An Bord Pleanála against the city council’s refusal of planning permission for a 66-bedroom hotel and 23 apartments over six storeys at 15-16 Baggot Street Lower.
The council rejected the plan after the nearby five star Merrion Hotel lodged an objection.
Merrion Hotel general manager Patrick MacCann told the council the hotel was “strongly objecting” to the scheme as it would have a detrimental impact on the Merrion Hotel’s ability to operate successfully.
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“We are concerned that the mixed use scheme as currently proposed will result in increased overlooking of the Merrion Hotel, which will adversely affect the privacy afforded to hotel residents,” Mr MacCann told the council.
In the Peachbeach UC appeal, planning consultant Tom Phillips + Associates says the applicant should have been afforded the opportunity to respond to the grounds for refusal in a council request for further information.
“It is a matter of some frustration for the applicant that the planning authority did not exercise this option, particularly given that none of the internal departments within the planning authority recommended refusal,” the appeal states.
John Gannon, a director at Tom Phillips + Associates, said: “We fundamentally disagree with the planning authority’s reasons for refusal and are of the opinion that the proposed development has been sensitively designed and will not give rise to unacceptable impacts on the surrounding context, including the existing neighbouring residential development, the conservation area and the wider townscape.”
Mr Gannon said the proposal for a now 62 bedroom hotel and 23 apartments optimises the use of a city centre brownfield site.
He says the height, scale and massing of the development has been amended and 233 square metres has been removed from the top two floors at either end of the building. “The curved glass and pitch roof elements within the original proposal have been removed and replaced by a far more modest upper level apartment that is set back further from the street,” he says in the submission.
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