It’s 2005. You’re a swashbuckling property developer. €54 million an acre. €379m altogether for a high profile 6.85-acres in D4 must seem like a bargain, a great investment. Sure, isn’t it the golden days of the acre? The Baron of Ballsbridge, Sean Dunne, certainly thought so. Skip ahead five years. 2010. You’re barely solvent. You have nothing built yet and experts estimate the site’s worth is now €100m. O tempora, O mores!
For a man who invited 44 of his friends on a two-week Mediterranean wedding cruise on the yacht Christina O, whose wealth was so conspicuous during the good times and who gets angry at what he calls ‘the Irish disease’ – jealousy and begrudgery – it’s hard to sympathise with his current predicament. Hubris, recklessness and a lack of foresight contributed to his downfall.
But it’s not all bad news for Dunne. Although there seems to be little appetite for large projects now, Dublin City Council approved his revised plans to construct residential, hotel and retail scheme at the Jurys/Berkeley Court site in Ballsbridge. The scaled-down, mixed-use application includes permission for a 15-storey tower, a 135-bedroom hotel and a range of apartments, shops and offices. A previous application to build to a 37-storey tower, sculpted like a diamond with a 232-bedroom hotel, a new cultural quarter and an embassy quarter had been rejected by An Bord Pleanála citing issues of bulk and over development.
Dunne has not disguised his desire to develop the location along the lines of London’s Knightsbridge, but with considerable opposition against this move (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0810/1224276470257.html ), it will be interesting to see whether his luck will turn.
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