O’Devaney Gardens site in Dublin 7
This afternoon
In the Dublin Inquirer…
Laoise Neylon reports:
A council report said the value of the land at O’Devaney Gardens in 2017 was €15 million to €20 million.
A council spokesperson said last Monday that that figure remains the same today. “The indicative land value range (€15M to €20M) as outlined in the O’Devaney Gardens Feasibility Study has not changed,” they said.
Other vacant sites in the wider area have significantly higher values.
In Fairview, a similar distance from the city centre, a site with scope for 32 apartments was for sale in May for €3 million.That valuation suggests a site value of €94,000 per apartment.
Back in 2018, a site in Cabra was valued at €32 million, which suggests a site value per apartment of €76,000. That was over a year ago and land values have gone up since.
What if the site value on the O’Devaney Gardens land was midway between these, say €85,000 per apartment?
Barta is building 411 homes for private sale, so an approximate commercial value for half of the land being transferred to Bartra would in that case be in the region of €35 million.
…Architect and housing expert Mel Reynolds said he was chatting to a developer recently and he put a challenge to him.
“I said to him – ‘Do you think if we sat down together, we would we be able to figure out a way to make a 12 acre site, worth €65m, disappear?” said Reynolds.
“Dublin City Council have managed to do just that,” he says. “The unbelievable thing is that they start off with an asset but then they just give it away for free.”
A Closer Look at the Costs of the O’Devaney Gardens Deal (Laoise Neylon, Dublin Inquirer)
Previously: “There Is Something Seriously Wrong Here”