Permission is granted for shopping centre demolition

A DECISION to finally approve planning permission for the demolition of the ramshackle, decaying Ballymun Shopping Centre has been welcomed locally.

The council recently secured vacant possession of the site, paving the way for the shopping centre buildings to be demolished in their entirety, along with the former health centre and some service buildings.

The existing car park to the south east of the site will remain but about half the current 400 spaces available will be inaccessible.

Ballymun Independent Councillor Noeleen Reilly said the centre was a visible reminder to everyone that lives here of what went wrong during the regeneration.

“For too long the residents of Ballymun has been held to ransom by false promises about the building of a new shopping centre,” she said.

“Meanwhile the old centre has fallen into disrepair and ruin.”

Cllr Reilly says it’s important that the shopping centre site is now put to good use.

“The last thing I want to see it a vacant piece of land in the middle of the town for another decade,” she continued.

“It is a prime spot in the middle of Ballymun and it needs to be redeveloped for commercial and residential use in the future.

“We want more shops in Ballymun so we can revitalise our town and create employment for our residents.

“There should be no delay in this happening. Demolition works should commence as soon as possible.”

Demolition of the centre will mark the end of an era for Ballymun. The original Town Centre was due to be built alongside the housing when plans for the suburb were first put forward in the 1960s.

However, just as there have been delays in demolishing the centre, there were also delays in building it with residents in the new high-rise estate relying on temporary shopping facilities for a number of years before it was finally built.

At the beginning it was the first major shopping centre on the Northside, rivalling the famous Stillorgan Shopping Centre south of the Liffey and attracting shoppers from all over the city.

However, as Ballymun declined, so did the centre and during the ‘80s open drug dealing just metres from the Garda station was a prominent feature.

The regeneration plan brought hope for a fresh start and a new town centre was included in the ‘Masterplan for a new Ballymun’ in 1998.

In 2003 Treasury Holdings applied for permission to build a 170,000 sq mt mixed-use town centre scheme that would have revamped the existing shopping centre and built new units on an additional eight acres.

However, the project ran into difficulties and it took six years before permission was finally approved but the recession was just starting to bite and it was no longer considered to economically viable.

With the developers bust, Dublin City Council bought the NAMA interest in the Shopping Centre in order to continue the regeneration.

Despite investment of over €3.5 million the crumbling centre couldn’t be saved and the final nail in its coffin was hammered home when anchor tenants Tesco left in 2014.

The council decided that refurbishing the shopping centre would not be economically feasible due to the cost and the fact that the aging complex would find it difficult to compete with modern facilities at Omni Park and Charlestown.