UrbanDevelopment:A planned urban village is being built just outside Naas, Co Kildare, that will include 1,500 homes, offices, clinic, shops and restaurants, writes Jack Fagan

An urban village with residential, leisure and shopping facilities for 3,000 people forms part of a new masterplan just approved for the 400-acre park formerly known as Millennium Park on the outskirts of Naas, Co Kildare.

New owners Paddy Sweeney, Tom Considine and Gerry Prendergast, who bought the extensive property last year for €315 million, have renamed it Osberstown and set about broadening its appeal.

The urban village will have five different public squares, one of them along a planned new public transport route from Naas town centre to the train station at Sallins. The extensive roadworks will include the expenditure of €10 million on a new interchange on the busy M7 motorway.

There will be 1,500 new homes and a broad mixture of shopping and other retail facilities in the village, including a range of restaurants and a boutique-style hotel.

Present indications are that the various retail elements will extend to almost 23,225sq m (250,000sq ft).

Even before that scheme gets under way, the planners have granted permission for a 70-bedroom daycare private hospital to be operated by the Renaasance Medica Group. Its facilities will include an oncology treatment unit.

The high level of interest in the park from business and high-tech companies has led to the sale, off plans, of more than 70 per cent of the own-door units due to be completed in the coming weeks.

There will be 24 units in all ranging from 99 to 297sq m (1,066 to 3,198sq ft). Work is also to begin shortly on two further office blocks of 4,830 and 4,087sq m (52,000 and 44,000sq ft) which are expected to appeal either to semi-State companies or other firms looking for an accessible location and lower overheads.

One of the existing tenants in the park, International Fund Services, a subsidiary of State Street Corporation, is to double its office requirement to 1,858sq m (20,000sq ft).

Its workforce is to be increased from 120 to 200 to handle the company's growing role in the global hedge fund industry.

Gerry Prendergast suggests that Osberstown is unique because it is the first new urban centre where residents and employees alike can "benefit from efficient use of saved time and diminished stress.

"They have no long commuting times, they have access to childcare facilities, great employment opportunities and proportionately lower living costs relative to those in the city centre."