In Killiney, Co Dublin, members of U2’s family are trying to stop a property developer from building four contemporary homes in the grounds of Montebello House, a Victorian pile near the seafront. The wives of Bono and The Edge, businesswoman Ali Hewson and choreographer Morleigh Steinberg, as well as artist and long-time U2 associate Guggi, have all lodged objections to the plans for the grounds of the protected structure.
On the northside, Howth resident Larry Mullen jnr is leaving nothing to chance when it comes to neighbours developing their properties. The drummer has a simple solution to the problem: buy up the surrounding houses.
Mullen already owns a sprawling compound on the strand at Claremont Road made up of three houses. A decade ago, he demolished one of the properties, Claremont Cottage, to give himself space to more than double the size of Claremont Lodge, where he has lived for more than two decades.
Mullen also owns another neighbouring house known as Strand Lodge, which he is refurbishing and has told planners he intends to use it as guest accommodation.
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Now he has added another neighbouring property to his Howth portfolio. In December he bought Marino Lodge, next door to his home, for €2.65 million in an off-market deal from accountant Carl Moynihan and his wife, bridal dress designer Kathy Stafford, according to recently filed records in the Registry of Deeds.
A good fence would be a lot cheaper.
Lowry putting in a home gym
Shane Lowry is also in expansion mode at his home in Rathgar, south Dublin but it’s his muscles he’s trying to develop rather than his square footage. The golfer, who lives for much of the year in Jupiter, Florida, recently spoke about improving his physical fitness by investing in a home gym at his US base.
Now he’s doing the same in the Dublin 6 house he bought for €2.85 million three years ago. The Clara man has applied for planning permission for a flat-roofed building in the rear garden that will house a state-of-the-art gym where he can work out like his gym bunny friend Rory McIlroy.
Film producer Alan Moloney working on big things like these
Film producer Alan Moloney recently made Small Things Like These with Cillian Murphy. But he’s also working on big things, such as partnering with a number of Hollywood heavyweights to build a 74,000sq m film studio at Grange Castle business park near Clondalkin in south Dublin, which received planning permission earlier this year. The project, which was previously planned for the Poolbeg peninsula, has been previously endorsed by Bono.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show Moloney, who produced the film adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn, is also involved in plans by Oak View Group (OVG), a US entertainment developer, to bring a new 20,000-plus seater concert venue to Dublin – that’s about twice as big as the 3Arena.
The company, which recently held talks with the RDS about possibly locating the venue in Ballsbridge, is still considering a number of locations around Dublin.
In one meeting with Dublin City Council’s chief executive Richard Shakespeare last September, Moloney was described as being “centrally involved in the Dublin project”.
Perhaps it’s down to the Bono connection. OVG, which recently completed the 23,500 capacity Co-Op Live venue in Manchester, is partly owned by Irving Azoff, the U2 frontman’s manager.
Who is the lucky owner of ‘unlucky’ Sorrento House?
A decade ago Rossa Fanning, then a barrister and now the Attorney General, dubbed Sorrento House in Dalkey, Co Dublin, the “unluckiest” house in Ireland after it was dogged by eight legal actions in the previous decade. Previous owners of the best address on Sorrento Terrace were engulfed in High Court clashes with neighbours, builders, engineers and even insurers.
It’s going smoother for the current owner, the mysterious Sorrento HGT Unlimited, whose main shareholder is Wicklow accountant Nicholas Cushnahan but whose beneficial owner is unknown.
The lucky owner, whoever they are, bought the house for a then record €10.65 million in 2021 and they have been refurbishing it since, recently adding more garage space and staff accommodation. Now they’re seeking to add the one feature it doesn’t have: an outdoor swimming pool and Jacuzzi overlooking Killiney Bay.
What a pity for its owner it wasn’t ready in time for last week’s stunning sunshine.
The bald truth
Academics are often derided as eggheads. Perhaps that’s why the UCD Geary Institute’s latest research looks at a topic close to your columnist’s heart: baldness.
In a study entitled “hair loss requires support, not products and exploitation”, researcher Dr Glen Jankowski examines “the cultural stigma of hair loss, particularly driven by its commercial medicalisation into a disease”.
He argues for “improved medical education and stricter regulation of businesses profiting from hair loss distress”.
Perhaps worth a read before booking your trip to Turkey.
US business types get full immersion in the idiosyncrasies of the humble Irish hot press
Last week amid the Donald Trump-induced global stock market turmoil, online business publication Bloomberg took a break from the collapse of Dow Jones, the S&P and Nasdaq to focus on the issues that really matter: hot presses.
The favourite publication of financial movers and shakers gave its readers an insight into the intricacies of Irish immersions.
“Look closely at the floor plan of an Irish home up for sale and you’ll often see a nook labelled with the letters ‘HP’. These initials mark the location of a clever piece of domestic equipment that is little known outside of Ireland (and somewhat on the wane at home). It’s called a hot press, and it deserves to be appreciated, and possibly even loved, across the world,” the paean to the humble hot press began.
The author of the article, London-based Feargus O’Sullivan, notes the vagaries of the immersion can be a source of great wonderment for US visitors.
“For those accustomed to just hopping in the shower and experiencing instant hot water, immersion heaters demand a bit of advance planning, and even if insulated with something that looks like a down jacket, they don’t always hold their heat very well. Their energy costs can also be a source of domestic tension, with leaving the immersion on cited as proof of the younger generation’s wasteful ways,” he writes.
Let’s hope our clothes-drying idiosyncrasies provided some welcome distraction to the rattled traders on their Bloomberg terminals last week.
