7 September 2017:
Development worth €160 million, spanning eight buildings and to include 237 apartments, a 136-bed hotel, 400,000 sq ft of offices and an acre of open plaza is coming on track on Cork city’s Horgan’s Quay
The mixed-use development is likely to take between three and five years to deliver and is being branded ‘HQ’, picking up on the location’s initials.
A development deal was agreed between CIÉ and joint purchasers, the major Irish property company the Clarendon Group and BAM Ireland.
The quay-side development, on six acres at the city end of the 17-acre Horgans Quay rail station site (which also is currently being redeveloped by CIE,) is being hailed as a significant new urban quarter for the southern city, and a boon for development on the Lee’s north quays.
HQ will provide a hotel close to rail and bus links and to the city centre, as well as offices for FDI companies, plus almost 240 apartments which will be available to rent only, to meet backed-up demand from firms locating employees into the Cork region.
The planning application reveals the scale of the development which has 160 metres frontage to Horgans Quay, looking south over the River Lee, and which was worked on by three firms of architects as part of a large design team.
It proposes eight buildings, with three office blocks of six to eight floors totalling over 400,000 sq ft of offices, a 136-bed hotel with rooftop restaurant facing Lower Glanmire Road, and four blocks of apartments, some up to 11 storeys tall, totalling almost 240 units, built for the private rental market and likely to rent for over €1,500 a month each.
The development, likely to be done on a phased basis, may see up to 450 construction jobs, with enough offices being built for 5,000 workers. It faces across the Lee to where O’Callaghan Properties and BAM are on site preparing for the start of the 310,000 sq ft office development at Navigation House on Albert Quay, across four buildings on 2.25 acres.
The Horgan’s Quay/HQ project includes retail, restaurant, a creche and leisure uses, and conservation of industrial rail buildings such as the Station House, the Carriage Shed, and a former Goods Shed, as well as 5,000 sq metres of new public realm and walkways linking the buildings and Kent Station, called the Southern Plaza, which will open towards the River Lee and campshires/wharfs across the road, and which are owned by Port of Cork.
The design team includes O’Mahony Pike as master planners plus offices and Goods Shed, Wilson Architecture doing the hotel, Carriage Shed, retail and a residential block at Lower Glanmire Road Residential block, Reddy Architecture + Urbanism doing residential and the Station House, and Aecom doing the public realm, with Jack Coughlan Associates as conservation architects, with ARUP, MMOS and EDC as consulting engineers.
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