Developers are eyeing Dublin's green spaces, but it may not necessarily be bad news if some of them fall to housing, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
This week's revelation that Foxrock Golf Club had been told it would soon be receiving a written offer worth €400 million from developers for its 50-acre site on Torquay Road will have dismayed residents of one of Dublin's most sought-after suburbs - not least architect Ronnie Tallon, whose serene modernist home overlooks the golf course.
Everyone is tight-lipped about who will make this offer. It is known that Treasury Holdings has been talking to a number of golf clubs in Dublin, having "banked" planning permission for two courses at Milverton, in Skerries, and bought Galen Weston's land at Roundwood, Co Wicklow, for another pair.
Attention was focusing yesterday on Castlethorn Construction (run by Dundrum Town Centre developer Joe O'Reilly), which recently bought land adjoining Woodbrook Golf Club in Bray, Co Wicklow, or the Cosgrave brothers, who engineered a controversial deal to relocate Dún Laoghaire Golf Club.
With the exponential increase in land values, green acres can no longer be taken for granted anywhere in the capital. Foxrock golf club's 580 members must be slavering at the prospect of windfall gains as well as the promise that a new course and clubhouse would be built for them at another location.
That's what has already happened in the case of Dún Laoghaire Golf Club, whose members voted overwhelmingly in 2002 to sell their long-established 78-acre course to the Cosgrave Property Group in return for a new 27-hole course near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, plus €20.3 million in cash.
Bray Golf Club did the same in 1999, swapping its 53-acre nine-hole course by the River Dargle to Eddie Dwyer, of Dwyer Nolan Developments, for a new 18-hole course and lavish clubhouse on Bray Head, plus €2.54 million, in a deal facilitated by the Earl of Meath, who owned land in both areas.
Having assembled a further nine acres, including the adjoining Industrial Yarns, Dwyer sold the lot in 2003 for €90 million to a consortium led by property developer Paddy Kelly. The Pizarro consortium is planning a major residential and retail complex on the former golf club site, in the teeth of local opposition.
The douceur being offered is a public park and landscaped areas along the Dargle as well as a new bridge linking the site to Bray railway station. Plans for the Dún Laoghaire Golf Club site also include a major public park, in part-compensation for the loss of green space to houses and apartment blocks.
However, developers do not easily get their way. It took a 12-hour meeting of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to agree to rezone the golf club for residential development, and in the end this was carried by the slimmest of margins - just one vote - and only after Martin Cullen laid down the law.
As minister for the environment in 2004, he used powers under the 2000 Planning Act to direct the council to rezone more land for housing, on foot of a finding by Derek Brady, then county manager, that the county development plan it had adopted was "deficient" in meeting its housing objectives.
The argument was made that the golf course's location in the heart of Dún Laoghaire made it ripe for development. Cllr Eugene Regan, the council's Cathaoirleach, said it would be "a shot in the arm" for an area in the doldrums - as the town centre undoubtedly is - as a result of population decline.
One of the strongest points made by those who favoured developing the golf course was that this would provide an opportunity for younger people who had grown up in Dún Laoghaire to buy homes there, instead of having to seek more affordable housing throughout the wider Dublin commuter belt.
BUT THIS WAS a vain hope. The 230 houses and 626 apartments in the first phase of the Cosgrave scheme include no "social or affordable" homes. Due to the filleting of Part V of the 2000 Act by Martin Cullen - the very minister who implicitly directed that the golf course be rezoned - these can be built elsewhere.
Amenities being offered on the site - which is close to Dún Laoghaire's main street - include a convenience store, cafe, shops and creche, a 5.5-acre park, which will have a lake as its centrepiece, and other green spaces as well as a pedestrian and cycle path running through to Rochestown Avenue.
Altogether, assuming that planning permission is granted for each of two phases, the proposed development will provide more than 1,700 homes in an area that desperately needs an infusion of new life. And all of them will be within walking distance of the Dart station and bus services to the city centre.
Whoever buys Foxrock Golf Club would also have a fight on their hands. Currently zoned as green space under the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown county plan, any change would require rezoning, and it can't be assumed that councillors - who lately strengthened protection for green spaces - will agree.
Meanwhile, tongues were bound to be wagging in Milltown Golf Club last October after a small infill site of only 1.27 acres, directly opposite on Lower Churchtown Road, was offered for sale with a guide price of €12 million-plus; on that basis, it would surely be tempting to wonder what the golf course is worth.
Anyone looking at a map of Dublin, as economist Colm McCarthy noted several years ago, can see that "there's an awful lot of green blobs" - public parks, golf courses, playing pitches and sites owned by religious orders. Indeed, the city has more green space per capita than any European capital. McCarthy cited the case of St Anne's Park in Raheny.
"It's so sparsely used that women, in particular, won't go for a walk there even during the day. Apart from the arboretum, the rose garden and the Red Stables, the rest of it should be built on," he suggested, in a radical solution to the problem of sprawl.
But judging by the number of councillors coming out of the woodwork to denounce higher-density housing, the public remains deeply sceptical of the need for containment. Based on personal experience, what they fear is that every household will have at least two cars, causing horrendous traffic congestion.
It is clear, however, that the current trend of dispersing new homes further and further out, with no public transport to serve them, produces even higher levels of car dependency; no wonder Dublin was cited last autumn by the European Environment Agency as a "worst-case scenario" for sprawl.
As Britain's Urban Task Force warned in 1999, sprawl not merely consumes more land, but also "means more traffic on over-crowded roads, more energy use, further depletion of natural resources, fewer tranquil areas, loss of biodiversity, increased air pollution and intensified social segregation".
As urban density is increased, it said, the "land-take" diminishes rapidly. More and more people are close enough to shops, schools and other facilities to walk or cycle, and an efficient bus service can be made viable. And the very fact of closeness contributes to the vitality of urban neighbourhoods.
In this broader context of sustainable development, the loss of a private golf course - which is, after all, exclusive to its members and their guests - or even the sacrifice of sections of St Anne's Park (which covers 270 acres) might be seen as relatively small prices to pay for a more compact city.
What stands in the way of a windfall?
A number of hurdles stand between the members of Foxrock Golf Club and the €400 million that developers are reportedly due to offer for control of the golf course in a land swap deal.
For a start, it is likely that members will vote on whether the club's constitution should be changed to allow a sale. A distribution of the sale proceeds to club members is likely, given that full members of the club are the ultimate owners of its assets.
The prospect of a big cash windfall will doubtless appeal to many members, but some who live near the club's nine-hole course may oppose selling because they would be inconvenienced by a move to an alternative site.
Any requirement under the club constitution for a unanimous vote would considerably lessen the prospects of success.
Then there is the matter of current planning guidelines in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, which prevent the construction of housing on the site.
The local council recently voted to strengthen protection of green spaces in the area, but developers might opt to buy the club and campaign for a change in the local development plan. It is most unlikely that the developers in question have not already examined the plan in detail.
Inevitably, planning issues will also arise in respect of any proposals to build a new 18-hole course at a new site.
If the sale does go ahead, the proceeds will be subject to capital gains tax at 20 per cent. This tax would be levied even if there was no distribution to members.
However, any money reinvested in new club facilities would be exempt from such tax under "rollover relief" provisions. While developers would be likely to fund the construction of a new course, the amount of any funding required from the club itself remains unclear.
To take advantage of rollover relief, the club would have to apply for a special Revenue designation. To the extent that such money would be reinvested in sporting facilities, accounting sources believe that Revenue would grant such a designation.
It is likely that ownership of the club assets is vested in members only for the period of their actual membership. Thus former members and the estates of deceased members would not be entitled to any of the sale proceeds.
Arthur Beesley