€250m landmark campus planned near Dublin Airport

A LANDMARK international business park that will probably cost more than €250m to construct is being planned by developer Michael Howard at a site near Dublin Airport.

His company, Genvest, intends to build 13 grade A office blocks on a huge site beside the M50. It's expected that the campus could eventually see up to 8,500 people employed there.

The massive development will provide one million sq ft of office space on a 17.2-hectare site that hopes to emulate business campuses occupied by tech giants such as Google and Yahoo in California.

"The development of this business park establishes a new benchmark for business communities in Ireland," the company has told the local council in a masterplan for the business campus.

"The project builds on the masterplan concepts of companies such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo," it added.

Genvest has just applied for planning permission for the first phase of the project, which will include three office blocks, each of them five storeys tall.

One building in that first phase will have 7,404 sq m (80,000 sq ft) of floorspace, while the other two will each have 8,283 sq m (89,000 sq ft). Those offices are expected to provide workspace for up to 2,000 people. The business park will include a park and a running track.

Genvest said that it would be a "flagship development at both national and international level".

"The idea of office buildings clustered around a central park is a new concept for use in business parks in Ireland," Genvest believed. It's also envisaged that it will include food and retail outlets.

The site is at a key strategic location on an M1-M50 interchange, and is just a short distance from Dublin Airport.

Genvest believes that the development will help alleviate traffic on the M50, as it will reduce outward commuting from Fingal and north county Dublin. The site is not currently served by public transport.

The site is adjacent to a large Clayton Hotel, which is owned by Ireland's biggest hotel group, Dalata.

The hotel will be integrated into the business campus "visually and functionally", according to Genvest.

The hotel already has 467 bedrooms. The previous owners - the Moran and Bewley's Group - had sought permission to add 367 bedrooms, as well as a conference centre.

Dalata has confirmed that it will not proceed with that scale of extension, and is now working on plans to add 140 more bedrooms to the property.

From Irish Independent (23/9/2016)